Ubiety, Mobility & Transitions: The Quest For Ecological Intelligence

The 2007 launch of the Apple iPhone marked a turning point in the evolution of the experience of humans interacting with and/or through digital technology. Despite leaving ample room for improvement, the iPhone made clear that the field had matured to the point where the primary challenge no longer lay in individual interactions with individual technologies; rather, it had shifted to battling the every-growing, largely technology induced complexity in the social interactions within and amongst the societies of technologies and people. By analogy, the better we get at the architecture and construction of houses, the more the need for urban planning escalates. From this perspective, the holy grail of "next big thing" turns out not to be a "thing" at all - not a device, application nor service. Rather, it will be a change in the social relationships amongst the things which already exist, will exist, and with and amongst the society of people with whom the technologies are intermingled.