Get in Touch With The Future

An interesting thing is happening lately, and it’s giving me a lot of fodder. I wanted to share a few opinions with you.

First off, as you know I love predictions and making some of my own. For example, I wrote a controversial white paper several years ago, called “The Death of The Salesletter.”

In it, I predicted that more and more salesletters will become shorter, more dynamic, more targeted, and more engaging. The explosion in video salesletters being one of them.

And that was over three years ago!

Recently, I wrote about another big upcoming trend, and that’s the explosion in cloud computing and how it will change the future of online business. I even blogged about it here in a post entitled “The Future of The Internet is Cloudy.”

For example, I downloaded Xmarks, a nifty online-​​based bookmark synchronizer that also synchronizes my native bookmarks on IE, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari using the cloud. It even synchronizes passwords and form fills, although I use LastPass for that.

But recently, a new product hit the market that reminded me of something…

We’re seeing a huge change in the way we work with computers. In my white paper, I talked about “multisensorial salesletters” where salesletters will increasingly engage all three modalities of communication (i.e., visual, auditory, and kinesthetic).

For instance, print media is a tactile medium. It’s mostly kinesthetic. The radio is auditory, while the TV, which may be both auditory and visual, is predominantly visual.

The computer, on the other hand, with the help of your keyboard and mouse, are all three. They help engage more senses. They’re visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.

Therefore, it makes perfect sense that sales messages online should be multisensorial. Significant statistics prove that, the more senses you engage, the more sales you will make. Which is why I predicted that video salesletters would explode — as it has.

But one thing struck me.

While we use a mouse and a keyboard, the kinesthetic component is somewhat indirect. These tools enable some tactile interaction, but they are more or less guides. (The Wii video console is a better example of having a bit more direct tactile engagement.)

Now, enter the new iPad.

iPhone and iPad are definitely more direct forms of kinesthetic communication. Sure, touchscreens have been around for years. But Apple helped touchscreens to penetrate the mass-​​market by making them easy, practical, and of course cool.

When I first heard of the iPad, I thought to myself, “This is the future!” I thought that more and more computers will become like that — direct contact with the message.

(Marshall McLuhan was dead-​​on, if not pretty darn close.)

iPad is not just a larger iPhone. It’s much, much more than that. Better said, its introduction means a lot more than what most people care to give it credit for. Some people don’t like it. A lot of people say it’s just a bunch of hype. But I say it’s the future.

And now, I see this article in Mashable, which underlines exactly what I thought — in that research shows that all computers will be eventually touchscreen-​​based.

By the way, as I’m sure you have guessed, I love visionaries, futurists, and predictions. John Naisbitt’s “Megatrends” is one of my favorite books. I often mention “high-​​tech, high-​​touch” in my work. Faith Popcorn is another visionary I admire a lot.

Speaking of Marshall McLuhan, other than his most famous quote (i.e., “The medium is the message”) he is mostly known for, here are a few more of his fascinating quotes. Read them, and you’ll see how ahead of his time this guy was.

Anyway, ’tis all food for thought.

The important thing in all of this, is this: how do we mold our businesses, products, and services to fit these upcoming trends? More important, how can we monetize them?

Bottom line, keep your eyes peeled. Just sayin’.