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We made some predictions about the future in our last session. Most of them are rather shocking – well, to most of you, it will be however ;-):

• We all will grow incredibly fat
• Everybody will become utterly stupid
• Laziness will become society’s steepest problem
• The Internet will totally disappear

Ok, this might sound hilarious and incredibly off record, yet every prediction is extremely linked to the future of the web. Let me explain why.

1) We all will grow incredibly fat

Since the introduction of the iPhone, people tend to surf more and more using a smartphone. Windows mobile users, nor BlackBerry, Nokia or any other device or mobile OS manufacturer created a browsing experience that was so fun to use. And never before was a phone the portal to such an enormous amount of applications. Over 10 million users worldwide downloaded up to November 2008 (in only 4 months !!!) over 300,000,000 (yup, 300 million) applications. Most of them allow you to sit down, relax and do what you want to do. Examples shown were ordering pizza, flipping a coin, turning on the heat, checking one’s bank account and even feeding the neighbour’s dog from your own lazy couch.

And as obesity is often caused by a sedentary lifestyle, we are pretty damn sure that the years to come we all will become very fat.

2) Everybody will become utterly stupid

Yet another unpleasant prediction. Or maybe not. The Google founders stated in an interview in Playboy (yes, that’s true, you can still read the article over here) what their utmost goal was: building a brain extention worthy that name. Sergey Brin even said:

“You can imagine your brain being augmented by Google. For example, you think about something and your cell phone could whisper the answer into your ear.”

They are halfway there with the google mobile app they released in December for the iPhone. Or think about how tools like Evernote made our life easier or cool gadgets like Livescribe offer new ways of connecting one’s memories to the Internet.

You see the need of being smart is no longer there once all gadgets and tools that surrounds us take over our memory…

3) Laziness will become society’s steepest problem

A third observation we made is the fact that your browser will become so smart, that it does most of the (dirty) work for you. The semantic web, as it is called, makes it possible for computers to understand and cooperate better with humans as Tim Berners-Lee once said (in 1999 already!). Many tools enable those experiences already, but it will get even more exciting the years to come.

Your PDA, GPS, cellphone, email program, browser, other applications, even your camera and your game console and settop-boxes all keep tons of data about you. It is only a matter of time before we can truly benefit from all data stored on those devices to inter-connect with each other with the power of the Internet as a catalysator. We gave three examples of how your life might change dramatically…

… in such a way that you never ever have to think for yourself again. Just let your devices do the talking.

4) The Internet will totally disappear

But it doesn’t matter one bit, since the Internet will disappear any time now. Or at least, the way we know the Internet will change. We entered the era of pervasive computing, meaning that everyday objects will be connected to the Internet. Better known as The Internet of Things. And forget about the Internet being limited to be browsed on your computer or mobile phone. It will be possible to collect data from it using RFID tags, graphical tags or even virtual tags (also called virtual graffiti) from anyplace anytime.

One day (well actually today if you live in the US) you will be able to take a picture of your internet connected phone and get info back about it: cheapest online prices with the immediate possibility to order it online or even prices at stores nearby with the route descriptions to it if you prefer so.

The Internet – as we know it – will have weaved in the fabric of everyday life as Mark Weiser once said (in 1991!!!).

The podcast of our entire session can be watched here and it is still possible to subscribe to it, as we will be updating it on a regular basis from January.

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Or have a look at the presentation on Slideshare: