The Internet of Experience - and the role of trust

With the rise of Virtual Reality the value of experience over things increases still further.

Kevin Kelly argues we are headed for a future beyond the internet of things which becomes the internet of experiences. He explains the shift in VR as taking (for example) a gaming experience and shifting it from something we watch to something that happens to us.

Perhaps in a similar way our social platforms will shift from things we contribute to and consume content from into social environments in which experiences happen to us - from a simple conversation with a friend as if they were in the room with us, to the sharing of an immersive experience with others as we try to solve a problem, fix a date for a trip or simply enertain each other with the stories of our experiences.

Given a world of always on tracking and recording - of behaviour and of experiences, we may be able to rely on replaying the actuality of a recent experience rather than retelling the story from our recollections - complete with an overlay of stimuli to share how we felt (who knows, it could even prompt your friends' heart rate and blood pressure to fluctuate as yours had - with suitable medical constraints).

This quickly takes us into the challenges of the Experiencing Self versus the Narrative Self discussed in my recent series of posts on the Four Dimensions of Customer Experience and illustrates once again how much we must catch up in our understanding of experience in order to improve it and select which of our 'selves' we should be designing experiences for.

Even online purchases will become an immersive experience happening to you, shaped specifically for you (probably for the decision-making Narrative Self).
That experience will be available anywhere anytime, just as e-commerce has become available everywhere through the miniaturization of computing to enable access on your mobile and tablet.

VR will follow the same route - starting out as helmets, suits and gloves in specially built rooms to deliver truly immersive experiences - the equivalent of the original warehouse-sized computers of the early 70s. In time VR could be delivered by any connection to the skin - a patch under your watch perhaps - so long as we figure out a way of fooling the body's systems of perception at brain level, who needs the bulky headgear?

Instead of granting an app access to our Facebook profile we may find ourselves being asked for access to our central nervous system. Anyone asking for that is going to have to build up one helluva legacy of trust.

Looks like the Trust-focused output of the 10 Principles of Open Business is going to be relevant for a long time to come...