2 Abbreviations to Watch: 3D and 4G
By Robert Jones
Two abbreviations to watch this year: 3D and 4G.
They encapsulate two technologies that are just starting to go mainstream. These technologies won’t reach everyone straight away, but by the end of the decade they’ll be shaping our lives. They’ll be changing the game for thousands of businesses. And they pose some big questions about the future of branding.
3D isn’t 3D films, but something much more interesting: three-dimensional printing. This means machines that create objects by building them up out of layers of (for example) plastic. They’ve been used for years in industry to make prototypes, but now you can get them in kit form to use at home. In ten years, you won’t go out and buy things, you’ll make them at home to your own specifications.
And 4G is the next generation in mobile. It’s much, much faster than 3G. True 4G offers speeds up to 1Gbyte/second, which makes even Ethernet extinct – in ten years, there’ll be no more data cables. Everything will be cloud-based – there’ll no longer be any need to own media content. Just as 3G created the smartphone, 4G will create a new generation of devices, applications and ways of doing things.
Why do these two technologies matter? 3D printing signals potentially the end of mass production: it becomes as cheap to make one-off items as it is to produce thousands. As the Economist says, ‘It may have as profound an impact on the world as the coming of the factory did’.
And 4G brings finally the end of mass media. Instead of one producer broadcasting to millions, everyone will be able to originate and share content in video form. Whatever you want will be available whenever you want wherever you want. People (and things) will be continuously connected to each other, whether they’re stationary or moving around. As the Yankee Group says, ‘4G mobile upgrades will lay the foundation for the fundamental reshaping of the telecom industry and commerce as a whole’.
Two massive game-changers. And the combination could be explosive. When you combine the two abbreviations in one sum, 3D+4G, you get the chance to download the design for almost anything, and then physically make it, almost instantly.
And these two technologies have huge implications for brand. Branding was born in the age of mass production, as a way to guarantee product quality. It came of age in the era of mass media, as a way to create desire. So when we’re beyond mass production and mass media, what role does brand have?
Neither of these technologies will change the world overnight, or change it completely. But they will accelerate a change in how we all think – a change that will be universal and profound. A change from ‘they make things’ to ‘I make things’. A change that few of today’s corporations – which were built for the twentieth-century world of mass production and mass media – are ready for.
Economist: http://www.economist.com/node/21541382
Yankee Group: http://www.yankeegroup.com/ResearchDocument.do?id=56982
Buy a 3D printer for $795: http://www.3dstuffmaker.com/
