My Elastic Future Self

Mobile has changed my behavior, for sure. But more interesting is how the mobile dynamic is changing my expectations.  No longer am I a destination based person, but task based. And time has become elastic.

I don't want to set aside a specific time to accomplish a task.  My expectation is that location awareness should prompt me to complete a task, when appropriate. An example is groceries - I have a written list near my fridge, but never make a point to go home before making a grocery run. It is likely that at some point in the day I am near a store, so why not go in and shop?  If I decide to go in ad hoc, without my list from home, I walk out missing things.  With location-based services, we should be able to make notes to the cloud, and proximity makes time irrelevant (when am I going shopping becomes a store is right here) -- replacing it with an on-demand accomplishment of knocking things off a list. If I'm near a store, wouldn't it be nice to be reminded, prompting me to drop in and take care of whatever it is?  This is mostly there today, just needs a nice mashup with trigger events.

This would be great for getting the last half of my tasks done. As it is, I am proud to have gotten my dry cleaning bag from the house to the car, but remembering to get it from the car to the cleaners is lost on my location-based, social, elastic future self.  And I still haven't picked up the last batch.

This is pointing on how to design future services that don't seem intrusive. And, of course, the brand marketing that can follow.  I don't need my location broadcast to the world -- just to my personal behavior cloud and back to my device and me.  I don't want to have to check in - my device should be smart.  Knowing the services I use, the things I need done, and my location would be a great integration -- supporting our wild and free nature, and making our future elastic.