What technology is going to have the biggest impact during the upcoming New Year? Sitting down with a nice cup of tea on New Year's morning, there's a lot of choice and a lot of discussion. With CES coming up next week you can be sure that many stories are going to be about the future, and who will get there first.
I've no doubt that discussions coming out of the heat-sink that is the Las Vegas Convention Center will push VR not only as the next big thing, but that 2016 is the year where VR gets everything right and it goes mainstream. Silicon Valley's maven, Robert Scoble, is a great believer in VR, but also highlights developments in drones, self-driving cars, and the commoditization of delivery and supply services (the Uber-ization effect). Picking just one out of all that which can change the world in 2016 makes the odds at a Las Vegas Craps table look attractive.
Scoble's favourite interview videos of 2015 lay out just how much technology is out there ready to change the world.
But the change has already happened.
How would you feel as a company if your biggest payday of the year had been destroyed? Now imagine that not at a company level but at an industry level. The Irish entrepreneur behind Trustev, Pat Phelan, wrote 'Don't ever let yourself become irrelevant' this morning based around a simple question. How many 'Happy New Year!' SMS messages did you get last night?
[Back in 2009] I was also noticing global numbers for SMS on NYE were getting smaller. I warned and warned the carriers that these "small upcoming things" like Talmon Marco Viber, Facebook messenger and WhatsApp could someday be big. They seriously laughed, 'it's our network".
How many SMS did you get last night? Zero? This used to be the most profitable night of the year for the mobile operators globally. (SMS costs almost zero) Keep ahead of the game and don't let yourself become irrelevant in 2016.
The carriers did not understand the transformative power of mobile on their business model. Look at the contribution mobile has on the next big things. Commercial VR headsets are based around mobile phones for screens and movement tracking. Drones are controlled from mobile screens. Uber and the like don't even bother with a desktop client to interface with their ordering systems.
It's all about mobile.
And then Facebook's news feed pointed me towards one of my favourite Finnish writers, Tomi Ahonen. Mobile is faster, larger, more complex, and infinitely more versatile than you had planned.
More mobiles than humans yes, you had read that. But that is unprecedented by any tech, more people have mobiles than TVs, PCs or cars yes. But also more than credit cards or bank accounts. More people have mobiles than have running water or electricity or even have a roof over their heads. More people use mobile phones than wear a wristwatch or have any use for paper and pencil. But even illiterate people can use a mobile - and do. Homeless people have mobile phones. Refugees who abandon everything else, bring their mobiles. There has never been anything like mobile.
You thought you were prepared and had internalized how massive mobile was. You miscalculated. Its far bigger.
Mobile is already a trillion-dollar industry, and Ahonen's look at why you need to be utterly focused on mobile for 2016 is your must-read of the day.
And the kicker for me? I read all of these stories and watched all of these videos on my mobile. While having my breakfast, while watching my kids play Jenga, while listening to a leftist marxist occultist talk about the Christmas episode of Doctor Who on one of my favourite podcasts.
Mobile will be the fundamental building block of business in 2016. The foundations are all around us, and while everyone can see them, can you envision what will be built on those foundations? That's where success will be found in 2016. That's where the dreamers, the entrepreneurs, the investors, the movers, the influencers, and the joy will be found over the next twelve months.
I can't wait to see what will be built and how we live in the new structures of our digital society.
