I have been thinking about this question for a while now. In part it helps me re-focus my energy and enthusiasm, but it is really hard to articulate what it is that makes digital technology so special and why we should care. Humanity puts a lot of resources and efforts into pushing this development forwards, and it wasn’t until this years CHI conference that I realized that the “physical-digital material” offers unique qualities for realizing those things we can dream and imagine. But at the same time the material as such offers much of the joy that we seek and need in just tinkering with and making stuff. It unleashes our creativity and enables us to make art, innovate, provoke, question, reflect, argue, articulate, tease, connect, empower, imagine and dream.
In the upcoming five years we will see more amazing things emerging than in the past ten. Bendable screens, tenfold increase of connected everyday things, virtual reality and a new era of gaming, health applications that makes sense and if we are lucky an open sourced version of Windows 9 10. It sure looks like Kickstarter, Indiegogo and the likes will show us part of the way into this future.
But back to the question, the fun part. Meeting people, talk and create things together, simply having a good time over a meal or a table top game, watching the kids grow up and trying to understand the world from their perspective, looking back at and revisiting “old” retro technology, experience again what might have been forgotten, and finally embracing new technology as it comes carefully wrapped up ready to be unboxed.