Copyright Ian Pearson, BT Futurologist

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The future of messaging

Ian Pearson, BT Exact, April 2004

Messaging technology has evolved a lot since cavemen learned to scrawl marks on rocks. Instant messaging, email, text, voice and video messages now play a big part in most people's lives. Although it is unidirectional communication, messaging isn't just half of a conversation. An important factor in its success is that the recipient can deal with the message when it is convenient to do so, or not at all. Other factors that are often important are anonymity, distance, lack of physical proximity of the sender and recipient, and the sender's freedom to construct the message at their own speed instead of having to relay it in real time.

Any of us that have ever watched Star Trek may wonder why we still don't have the instant voice messaging that the Enterprise crew use to communicate. The message is instantly relayed by the computer to the correct individual or room based on just their name and context. The context of knowing who is speaking enables the message to be addressed based on a single name. Accepting that today's crude voice based dialling still falls far short of what is needed, we will soon have access to intuitive instant voice messaging, which will quickly become an important service for social groups. Imagine a small clique of teenage girls, who are unable to survive without constantly talking to each other. If they can just speak and their friends can hear them, all the time, they would presumably be happy. This might possibly be done by social conferencing calls, which could provide an 'always on' call among the group. The majority of children, who are less exclusively connected, would prefer messaging technology. Children generally have different sets of friends, even if there is considerable overlap. In practice, children might use instant voice messaging technology with some of their friends, while being in a permanent conference with a particular clique. Of course, such services will not only be for children, but it is likely that they will be by far the largest user group.

Some personal messaging can be automated, between personality badges. These store information about us, our work, our personality, sexual preferences and availability. They will exchange information with badges belonging to other people (under our control of course), and alert us when we meet someone who is mutually compatible. This could be a fun way of meeting new friends, dates or business partners. There are several potential variants of this kind of gadget, such as an 'I fancy you' gadget that you can point and click at someone you are interested in, but which only has any effect if they have also declared interest in you. This idea crystallises out one of the main reasons that messaging has taken off so well. It cuts through the embarrassment that people often feel when trying to talk face to face with someone. Approaching someone directly incurs the risk of rejection, whereas clicking a button on a gadget only alerts them if they are also interested in you, so the rejections are filtered out electronically without the pain. As a result, we may see many more speculative approaches. While this is likely to improve people's social lives, it also carries a potential danger of splitting up existing relationships as it becomes easier for people to 'shop around for a better model' even after they have committed to a person.

Some of these personality badges above use directional messaging. Another version of directional messaging that is likely to have a popular social function is inter-car messaging. It is now illegal to use a mobile phone while driving a car unless it is hand-free, but the maturing of hands-free technology coupled with the fact that many people are in passenger seats will allow it to take off. Imagine being able to tell the person in front to move over so you can get past, to stop picking their nose, or to warn an oncoming vehicle of a problem down the road. It could also be useful for groups on an outing, split between cars.

Outside of the car, directional messaging could be a superb source of mischief allowing people to message specific passers by. Even without directionality, some people already use Bluetooth to send people anonymous business cards with a message in place of the name. Many people don’t get round to setting up the names of their mobile phones when they get them, so choosing which of the several phones in the available list is the correct one involves a fair degree of guesswork. Nevertheless, relying purely on luck appeals to some people when they have the cover of anonymity, even though almost anyone in a few metres radius could receive the message. A few people in railway carriages have already found this a productive means of picking up random dates. Adding directionality would allow precision targeting, but may also reduce the available anonymity. This kind of function combines a degree of excitement with the ability to bypass rejection embarrassment.

Bypassing the fear of rejection also partly explains the massive success of text messaging, why it is so often used for flirtation and why it can also be so dangerous for existing relationships. While it certainly can be a lot of fun in the short term, providing excitement and novelty or frequent new relationships, it may result in people holding too many shallow relationships without the rewards of a few deep ones. It also undermines the trust between people that is so critical to optimal bonding. So socially, it is a mixed bag of benefits and problems. What it does indicate is that when a new technology satisfies a latent desire, it can take off very quickly, whether the desire is good or bad.

A more refined messaging platform that combines some anonymity with higher precision targeting could use addressing by interest. People could send messages to those people with particular interests, within a defined geographic area. So you could quickly arrange a meeting of like minds in the vicinity, or co-ordinate a flash mob. It could even allow people at a conference, airport or rail station to quickly converge with others with similar business interests so that they can do deals, get some advice, or collaborate informally on a piece of work of mutual interest.

As the technology matures, our digital bubbles will make the world a much more interesting place. As we wander around, our bubbles will interact with the smart environment. Sensors, communication, storage and processing devices will be everywhere. This is called pervasive ICT, pervasive not only by physical ubiquity, but also because the technology will enter every area of our lives. This digital air notionally has the information (and algorithms) suspended in it, waiting for us to pass through that air-space before allowing us to access the information. Messaging technology can allow corporate and personal web sites to extend into this physical environment, broadcasting some material via wireless LANs or mobile networks to those people walking past, giving the web a local geographic overlay. We can think of this as street cyberspace.

Many of these services would lend themselves to abuse, either by nuisance individuals, spammers, or companies using intrusive or irritating marketing. Since there is no clear technology difference between a genuinely wanted message and spam, there needs to be a heavy layer of filtering technology between the user and the rest of the world. Some of the early hype for 3G mobile told us that we would expect to be bombarded with adverts from shops as we walk past them, offering us personalised promotions. While this is certainly feasible using the combination of positioning systems and personal profiling, most of us would set our filters to exclude such in your face advertising most of the time. But occasionally we actually want marketing information or special discounts, so the filters have to be smart. The user will effectively live in a semi-permeable digital bubble, shielded from unwanted marketing messages or unwelcome intrusions by individuals, while allowing appropriate messages and information through. Construction of this bubble will require a high degree of personal profiling technology. Either the system or our individual devices, or both, will gradually get to know us and our preferences. Stuff that we welcome will be allowed through, and stuff we don’t want will be kept out. This will vary according to where we are, what we are doing, who we are with, and other contextual parameters, such as whether we are working or playing. These context engines have been in development for years and will take a few more to become really useful, but without these smart shields, it is unlikely that the markets will achieve their full potential.

I personally believe that cultural information delivery will be a bigger service than advertising, mainly because it is more likely to be pulled down by the user, in contrast to advertising, which very quickly reaches a level where we reject it. When we are tourists in another city, we welcome information about the places around us. If we are interested in art, we may want to see the paintings produced by the chap living in the house we are walking past. Similarly, sitting opposite someone on the train who looks interesting, our digital bubbles could interact to exchange material. People are content. Combining such ‘bubble cyberspace’ with the personality badges, we can discretely check out the ‘output’ of someone nearby before enabling our personality badges to introduce us.

So overall, messaging technology has a great deal of future potential. Provided that we can protect our privacy and filter out abuse, there are many areas where our social and cultural lives could be improved, and other areas where clever marketers can get precisely targeted access to people at just the right moment.

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