All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
Artifact projections from 2005.
When Philips, the giant electronics company, wondered what it should be manufacturing nine years hence, it used a new method to come up with a matrix of proto-gizmos and foretypes.
In the past, Philips has had some global successes in innovation (CDs) and some terrific flops (CD-i). If the company learned anything, it was that social trends and cultural preferences are as important to inventions as technological advances. This time, rather than have its engineering department occasionally devise some cool gadget-that-ought-to-be, Philips employed an elaborate scenario process to make a more integrated view of the future.
The company assembled a heady team of sociologists, graphic designers, cultural anthropologists, engineers, filmmakers, ergonomists, and futurists to develop an abstract framework of cultural and technological trends. The team probed such intangibles as our shifting sense of time, multiple identities on the Web, nature awareness, and browsing patterns. From this profile, together with a sense of technical options, Philips came up with more than 300 scenarios, or short stories, about future products and services. From those 300, Philips compressed the possibilities to 60 clearly defined but interlocking concepts, which it crafted into a set of actual models.
The company took these models, immersed them in real environments, and made a video "commercial" about each, including how the proto-gizmos interacted with each other. The result is an impressively detailed world, unified by believable social dynamics and feasible engineering. A number of the concepts are singularly novel - emotion containers and ludic robots, for instance - yet entirely plausible. More on this project at www.philips.com/design /vof/. __Enhanced Jewelry
__
Our desires for body adornment and intimate communication meet in enhanced jewelry. Ear-ins are small cordless earphones that discreetly receive messages. They can also provide simultaneous language translations. Made from flexible memory material, they adapt to the shape of our ears. __Display Glasses
__
Information projects itself onto display glasses to remind us of scheduling or navigating information. Messages displayed can be controlled from a watchlike wrist interface. __Multimedia Clothing
__
Electronics are shrunk to thread size and then woven into our clothes. Washable garments use solar energy to power radios or stored music, or even - like T-shirts with ads on them - stored messages. This wearable multimedia can also display lights or colors that you can program. __Table Screens
__
Tables in bars and restaurants act as screens, displaying games customers can play while waiting, and providing video- and music-on-demand. These screens also show menus and allow users a point-and-pick way to pay for drinks, food, or an after-dinner show - it becomes an ATM and Ticketmaster. And, of course, it can show ads while you eat. __Hearts and Wands
__
The walls of any room become a multimedia display. To control the wall, users manipulate hearts and wands. A heart is a roundish touch-screen interface that responds to a user's touch, perhaps even to an individual's unique gestures. It commands multimedia as well as household functions, such as lights and climate. The heart also serves as a bowl for holding wands - personal devices that respond to speech commands. __Magic Pens
__
Some wands work as pens. Users can draw or write with these "intelligent input devices" just as they would with ordinary analog pens. But the magic pen lines are recorded digitally in the pen (and on paper), so the image can be stored, transmitted, or manipulated later. The simplicity of the stick metaphor permits the pens to be highly personalized.
