The geek in me gets very excited when I see videos like the one below: Microsoft’s vision for the future. Unveiled on February 27th at the Wharton Business Technology Conference, it’s a mock-up of how technology might interact with the world in 2019.

In the world of technology, 10 years is a significant span of time, and generally the ‘end-game’ ideas conceived now will interact with people and other pieces of technology in unknown future processes. This is because technology in its application must be seen as an evolving landscape of interconnected technologies, many of which don’t yet exist. It’s a spider web yet to be woven…

Perhaps this is why we traditionally go through what Gartner refers to as a technology hype cycle – we don’t yet understand know how to get from point A to B, but we’re excited about the idea of B. As a result, people’s expectations are inflated with dreams of a future technology, only to be disillusioned as the limitations become apparent. As time and scientific progress marches on, the actual technological application settles somewhere between the inflated and disillusioned expectations, but by then the world is a far different place then when the technology was thought up.

Now that said, Microsoft clearly has a good idea of how certain technologies are converging, and the applications  they would like to ultimately develop. People were impressed with the possibilities represented by Microsoft Surface, and this is clearly an extension of a specific thought process: how can we exchange and manipulate information in ways that are valuable and increase efficiency.

If you’re interested in ideas on how Government 2.0 might change in the future, head on over to a post Will, Ben and myself over the summer: 2018, A Vision of the Future

There’s a lot of cool technologies shown in the video. Which one excites you the most? A few years ago I remember doing some research on e-ink and thinking that it was only a matter of time before your morning newspaper was beamed to your digital reader (Kindle ‘version 4′) every morning. Or that it’d be great to have RFID enabled shopping carts that give directions to your groceries. Clearly these are just the tip of the iceberg.