Christian Gatard is a sociologist specializing in anticipation at the Le Comptoir prospectiviste design office. His colleague Olivier Parent and he had imagined, as early as 2010, what would be the device that would replace the smartphone in 2050, in a book entitled Our next 20 years. 2010-2030: the future deciphered (The Archipelago).
In your book, you imagined a replacement for the smartphone, the “psychodrome”. Can you describe it?
Christian Gatard: It is a screen that is created when you place your hand on any surface by spreading your fingers and lowering your thumb. A blink of the eye triggers its operation. The information is written on the screen in the reading mode that suits you: words or images, or of course both – this is the basic menu. You choose. You can also opt for the à la carte version: 3D images, total immersion, sound and light, simultaneous translation of texts, holographic encounters…
How will it be more disruptive than our cell phones?
CG: As soon as it is started, the psychodrome connects to your own brain and accesses almost the entire history of humanity. He takes stock of your situation, analyzes your state of mind, traces the history, will take a look at your genome. It identifies the scenarios of universal history which are closest to yours and offers you solutions. The system adapts and organizes the information according to your state of mind, your receptivity, your mood… Intelligent and intuitive search engines will search all of this for you. The psychodrome knows you better than you know yourself.
By this measure, smartphone manufacturers are outdated…
Olivier Parent: To continue to attract new users, smartphone manufacturers are condemned to disruptive innovation. Overall, the cell phone and its applications have lost their capacity for wonder. Will the smartphone of tomorrow, whatever its form, become the digital entry key to this dematerialized reality? Will we not be augmented when our glasses, our lenses, or even a biomechanical implant allow us to consult information from our phones directly in our field of vision? Or when the sound will reach us directly in the ear without headphones? We could almost speak of a “multimedia center”.