I was asked to contribute to a crowdsourced book about the future, looking to predict the world in 2020. While it doesn’t seem that far away, I took the liberty of virtually ‘closing my eyes’ to imagine how Media, Context and Education would change in 6 years time.
In the words of Theodore Hook
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
Media in 2020
In 1939 the New York Times wrote an op-ed on the adoption of a new media format back then, the Television, saying:
“The problem with television is that people must sit and keep their eyes glued on a screen; the average American family hasn’t time for it.”
The year 2020 will offer a much wider range of media, enabling anyone (and potentially “anything”) to create content and share it with the world. With the growth in content, there will be growth in the way media is consumed – whether it’s on devices, projected on walls, wearables, or on-body devices.
Context/IOT in 2020
Relevancy in search and social will be tailored to the individual. Personalized search results, product and services reviews from ‘relevant’ people and much more sophisticated content recommendations based on consumption, taste and behavior, rather than one-size fits all. Push notifications, or alerts, will be part of our interaction with any device, not just phones. For example, the fridge and TV will ‘talk’ to the user, recommending actions or adding reminders that can be acted upon instantly – running out of milk? you could order a new pint and schedule same day delivery with the click of a button, on the fridge. Most devices will be voice activated.
Education in 2020
Democratizing information will be a big shift in the next 7 years. What is starting with MOOCs and remote learning is a trend that will continue to grow, widening the range of people with access to education. Connectivity to the Internet will increase literacy in the poorest, less educated parts of the world, and ‘learning by doing’ will be an on-boarding process to the job market. Books will continue to be written, but school kids will learn from short bite-size modules, and gamification practices will be incorporated in schools to incentivize children to progress on their own.
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Here’s how this vision could look according to Corning:
I found it very easy to think about the future and imagine all these scenarios of the world changing through technology. How do you think the world will change in 2020?
I'm a former general partner at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google's first physical hub for startups.
I'm also the founder of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read. Since inception in 2012 we've built 11 schools and 50 libraries in the developing world.
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