Futurist describes the extraordinary social technologies of 2016

Seven years ago, futurist Ross Dawson accurately described the networked world of today, anticipating social networks, twitter, corporate blogging, crowdsourcing, personalised advertising and virtual personal assistants.Today, he offers insights into the extraordinary world of technology we will experience seven years from now.

Dawson’s forecasts for 2016 include:

• People wearing video glasses as they commute, experiencing new forms of television, news updates and information about the world around them and people they meet.
• ‘Lifestreaming’ will be commonplace. We will capture, store and share almost continuous videos, photos and conversations from our everyday lives.
• We'll have natural telephone conversations with computers, with almost all call-centre staff replaced by automated systems.
• Public measures of individual reputation will guide who we hire, do business with and date.

Over 40% of Australians will work independently rather than as employees, many providing services to organisations all over the world instead of commuting to an office.

A next generation of ‘thought interfaces’ will allow us to control our computers just by thinking. While the technology will still be basic, we'll have begun to merge machines and humans.