By : Anna Koretskaya
Have you seen the 2009 film The Surrogates, starring Bruce Willis? If you have, you’ll remember that according to the plot, in the near future people have avatars — androids that are fully controlled by a human operator. In fact it is these avatars who live a human life, communicate with each other, study, work and start families. And the people themselves are connected to the control panel for their avatars almost every waking hour.
Not a very pleasant prospect, is it? And also not the most realistic. Nevertheless we cannot deny the fact that human communication is already changing, and very radically.
We plan to look at how communication between people has changed over the past decades, what format of communication is most popular today and what actually awaits us in the future.
We communicate differently to our parents and grandparents
Let's dive into history and take a look at how our ancestors communicated with each other in addition to speech. After all, communication isn’t only done by voice.
In the 6th millennium BC, primeval people used tree trunks, and later the first equivalents of drums, to transmit signals over a distance.
During antiquity, foot (and then horse) couriers appeared, through whose efforts postal communications were established in Egypt, Persia, China and other countries.
In ancient Greece, mail was already sent not only by land, but also sea.
In ancient Asia, carrier pigeons were already used at the end of the first millennium BC.
In the Middle Ages, important written messages were delivered by couriers and charioteers, and the first analogues of modern postal services began to appear.
In 1744, Professor Johann Heinrich Winkler invented the telegraph, which made it possible to speed up the transfer of information many times over.
In March 1876, Alexander Bell and his assistant Thomas Watson successfully tested the first telephone in history.
On October 29, 1969, the first message was transmitted via the ARPANET network node at Stanford. This marked the beginning of the existence of the internet.
You already know the rest. The internet became public, people began to use smartphones and tablets, and wired telephones, and even more so regular mail, are now a thing of the past.
But what will happen next?
How will human communication change in the near future?
For convenience, we’ll divide the trends into several main categories and try to predict what awaits us next.
AR and VR technologies, metaverses
Augmented and virtual reality are already being widely used. But this phenomenon cannot yet be called mass-market, and the technologies themselves require a great deal of improvement. However, there have already been attempts to make augmented reality a part of our daily lives.
In 2013, Google introduced Google Glass augmented reality glasses to the public, and in 2014 they became available to ordinary customers. At that moment, the technology was far ahead of its time and was not widely used. But there are rumors that Apple is now working on its own AR glasses. This may well change the principles of communication and even interaction with the outside world. It is believed that such devices in the future may be able to replace smartphones.
Also, let's not forget about the metaverses — large virtual spaces, which in the future could become almost an alternative to real life.
Communication in Super Apps
Super Apps are applications that combine many services at once. Mobile banking, delivery services, payment services, chats, personal assistants, and more can be built into them. An example of a super application already exists — this is the Chinese WeChat. It’s likely we’ll soon see many alternatives. And then, instead of dozens of different apps, your smartphone will have only one for all occasions.
Holographic images
"Live" holograms are a common phenomenon in science fiction films. But if you think that such a thing is impossible in the real world, we can convince you otherwise. Cisco and Sony are supplying 3D presence technologies to this developing market. And in 2013, Microsoft began to seriously work on its Viewport project. The goal of the project is to create and improve the technology of holographic imaging using infrared cameras, projectors and color imaging devices. And although we have not yet seen any breakthroughs in this area, it’s likely that sooner or later communication with a hologram of your chat partner will become as common as a call in Viber.
Communication via video chat
Online video chat is far from a new format. It is worth remembering that Omegle and Chatroulette have been operating since 2009. Another interesting thing is that it was only in recent years that interest in online video chat grew especially strongly. In many ways this is thanks to the emergence of high-speed mobile networks, which made it possible to easily communicate via video from a smartphone almost anywhere. The coronavirus pandemic also played a role, as a result of which live communication has become very difficult. Online video chat turned out to be almost the only effective way to alleviate the lack of communication.
Now online video chat apps such as Meetme, Tinychat, IMeetzu, Paltalk, Emeraldchat and CooMeet are gaining popularity. We are convinced that they will remain in demand for many years to come. Yes, there will be newer, more advanced and more unusual technologies, but these will certainly be expensive, at least at first. Try online video chat — it is convenient, cheap and practical. Why pay more?
Video communication using drones with a“follow me” function
Imagine this: you go out for a run, keep a good pace, but then someone calls you. However you do not need to take out our phone, press your hand to your ear, or even stop to talk. You just take a small drone out of your pocket, launch it and it flies next to you so that you can talk to the caller without being distracted by your smartphone at all. This is not fiction — some popular manufacturers already have such gadgets: DJI, Yuneec and Hubsan.
Now imagine what opportunities this opens up for the future! You can give someone a video tour of your city by walking through the streets. Show the world in live action how you climb a mountain peak. Record your raw emotions while skydiving and much more. This is very exciting and promising technology, the possibilities of which we have yet to explore to the fullest.
The world is changing very fast
It’s important to understand the following: technology is changing faster than we can imagine. A hundred years ago, no one would have believed that we would be able to communicate with people on the other side of the world using a compact smartphone without any wires at all. And even more so see them in front of you on the screen. And VR and AR technologies were entirely out of the question.
It is quite possible that in 10, 20 or 50 years, humanity will invent a completely new format of communication, which we still have no idea about. And all our assumptions and conjectures will turn out to be false. Therefore, we continue to follow the news, new technologies and the continuing improvement in our communication tools. We’re sure that many interesting things are ahead of us, and change is closer than you think! [GP/JS]
