Two interesting future scenarios by
Stefan Constantinescu at IntoMobile. He predicts ubiquitous social networks.
Scenario 1: I walk into a bar and bump into a friend of mine I haven’t seen in a while. I ask him for his contact information so we touch our NFC enabled devices for a split second and we’re now in each other’s address book. He not only gets my name and phone number, but a list of all the services I’m currently using and have set to public. All of this data generated via my publicly declared services is pulled down and aggregated onto his device and is listed under my entry in his address book, think of it as FaceBook’s Newsfeed, but open and 100% under my control. Later that night I decide I want to let him access my personal blog so I go into my device and grant him the ability to see my private blog entries. He doesn’t have to do anything since the list of services I use is in my contact card and when I manipulate permission settings they automatically update for the people who have me in their address book. My friends will always knows what I’m up to and I don’t have to tell him to check out a particular website to see my data, it is my data after all, the fact that I have it being displayed on service A versus service B does not and should not make a difference.
Scenario 2: I walk into a bar I regularly enjoy coming to with friends and sit down at a table. Since the bar is in my address book it knows I’m a trusted party, I tap my NFC enabled device to the corner of a display near me and a menu appears with meals and drinks based on my previous orders, not only that, I get to see recommendations and ratings my friends left the last time they were in here. This information isn’t hosted by the servers in the bar, instead the UI pulls data that my friends left for this particular establishment which is either hosted on their devices or in their storage clouds. I can read it because they’ve granted me permission. I use my mobile device as a remote control, the touch screen acts as a trackpad, to order a drink and pay for it. Around 10 seconds after I finish making that purchase the screen fades out and the basketball game with my favorite college team shows up, this is possible because my mobile device is smart enough to know my preferences for the type of media I like to consume and can communicate that information to the display.
