Archive notice: This article was originally published on July 19, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The television of the future will know every individual viewer and offer a personalized programme: This forecast is part of the TV 2.0 vision of Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN). Its Head of Business Innovation, Lydia Aldejohann, presented her television vision for the year 2020 as part of the forward2business Future University in Braunschweig.
The conception of the television future consists of four elements: Thus will offerings transmitted via the Internet to the living-room television, will TV2.0 react to the individual profile of its viewer and offer personalized programmes. In doing so, TV 2.0 will analyze its user through intelligent software and get to know his needs better and better. Corresponding technologies were already being tested at NSN under the name “IVON”, Aldejohann explained.
Another feature of TV 2.0 is to become “Transaction Media”. According to this, the living-room monitor serves not as only as a television, but at the same time as a monitor for Internet applications, virtual worlds such as Second Life or live broadcasts of events from all over the world. “From Media to Space” is what Aldejohann calls the trend that allows users to live out their dreams in the media. The place for this used to be the diary, today it is the Internet – in future it will also be the television, Aldejohann concluded.
Not least, TV 2.0 will differ from today’s television through “Self Publishing”. In two to three years, it will be easy for Anyone to assemble his own television channel from the abundance of offerings on YouTube & Co. This “Self Channeling” will lead to a “lot of crazy channels”, Aldejohann predicted. She issued an appeal to all content owners to make greater use of the technological possibilities that already exist today: “If I were the Munich opera house, then I would already make television myself today or use the new possibilities and broadcast my high-caliber events all over the world for an event fee of, for example, 2 euros”, said Nokia Siemens’ chief innovator.
Ultimately, via “Mobile TV”, television will leave the living room. It will be possible to watch TV in any place on every conceivable reception device and over all networks. For example, it will then be possible to subscribe to the American baseball league and watch it in any location. At the same time, TV 2.0 will also integrate the telephone. In future, one will call one’s friends via the television or watch the same film with them in separate places and simultaneously discuss it via television. NSN is currently also testing such a platform under the working title “CoSe”. Later, according to the forecast, this will lead to the question: ‚Who is watching the same thing and lives around the corner?“ and new communities. Here there is also a major opportunity for local providers and retailers.
At the same time, Aldejohann emphasized that TV 2.0 will be “operable with one hand”. Abroad, this scenario is already partly standard, while Germany still lags behind in the use of television via the Internet. Thus, there are already more than 150,000 IPTV customers in Belgium.
The NSN Head of Business Innovation recommended that media and brand companies develop their strategy for the TV 2.0 world today. Thus, advertising mechanisms, for example, would shortly change fundamentally through the introduction of proprietary IPTV channels by brand companies. The trend is called “targeted advertising” and, through profile analyses of users, offers the delivery of advertising or media content accurate to the individual. Another vision of the future is M2M communication via RFID chips: here it is conceivable that the television can also communicate via RFID chips with the other objects in the room. “What marketing possibilities does it open up, for example, if the television recognizes that I am holding a can of Coke?”, Aldejohann asked.
Technologically, it is of course already possible today to view individual slow motions or events from any perspective via interactive real-time 3D software that enables real-time rendering. This offers, for example in football broadcasts, the possibility of replaying scenes or even virtually intervening in the game in gaming style.
Aldejohann cast a thoughtful glance at society’s shared stock of knowledge. In the past, all of Germany talked on Monday about Saturday evening’s “Wetten dass …?” What and with whom will people talk when everyone watches his individual television programme? Aldejohann named the community functions of TV 2.0 as a likely forecast. While one will no longer talk with the neighbor or work colleague about one’s own television experiences, one will instead talk directly during the programme with the other viewers of the same programme. New communities and new opportunities for existing communities would arise here.
With the TV 2.0 vision, this year’s forward2business Future University in Braunschweig came to an end. The Future University was “an outstanding event that will also be a highlight in the overall balance of the annual programme ‚City of Science 2007’”, said Barbara Straka, President of the host University of Fine Arts, in Your greeting. The Future University had asked those questions with which we must engage “if we want to transform our civilization into a society capable of facing the future”, said the University President.
Initiated by the New Yorker fashion chain, a partner of the forward2business think tank, eight visionaries of the society of the future had debated their forecasts with students and citizens of the “City of Science” during the past three months, including mp3 inventor Prof. Dr. Karlheinz Brandenburg, former Viva-MTV head Prof. Dieter Gorny as well as the shooting stars of the Web2.0 companies FON and Spreadshirt.
