How we navigate in(to) the future

It is known to be a very common problem in humankind: Navigation. I believe, the way we put ourselves into local context will change profoundly in the future.

Piz Muragl KMZ

We will be able to track any information about ourselves in the current position and in the nearby surrounding. Searching for the word "Restaurant" in the middle of Oxford Street in London will give you completely different result than querying the same word on top of the Himalaya. Mapping is therefore key. Mapping not only of physical objects but also about meta information of physical objects. Your mobile device will be able to query these information in real time (e.g. traffic information) and this will have an impact on how and which way you choose to travel.

In fact, at the moment, we are already pretty close to such an infrastructure. We have GPS technology to pinpoint our location, we have satellite images and street maps of almost every relevant place in the world. Furthermore, we have the world wide web that contains information about most of the places in the world.

So all we have to do now is connecting the dots to the big picture.

With a wirelessly connected device such as a mobile phone you can easily have both images at the same time: Standing on the spot and looking at the scenery while downloading the same scenery to your mobile device. Including all necessary information such as street names, directions, traffic or weather information.

All this will become even more interesting, as soon as you are not only down- but also uploading information and connecting to peers in your imminent or not-so-imminent surrounding!