Spatial and sociable

I have seen the future. I was lucky enough to spend a day at the MIT Medialab courtesy of Time Inc. The IQ per head is somewhat intimidating but I think they slowed down just enough to let us keep up. It's hard to draw a pithy conclusion other than to say there were some general themes that will effect the next generation of communications. I would summarize as follows:

Right now most web experiences are linear, two dimensional and limited in their ability to respond to our behavior through learning. Also most interfaces to things interactive tend to be mouse (in whatever form) to screen.

Much of the Medialab's work is in breaking these conventions; the development of intelligent fabrics and spaces; three dimensional and spatial representations of data and content and applications that learn from the inputs of users and the people with whom they associate.

You can't help feeling that they are working in the terrritory of 'nearly now' and that we need to apply the same kind of thinking to communication applications.