Screens here, there and everywhere

This video by The Astonishing Tribe AB has been making the rounds, showing touchscreen interfaces embedded everywhere in the near future. Rather than debate the timing (2014 seems soon for us all to replace our bathroom mirrors), we should accept that eventually falling tech costs will make screens ubiquitous -- so then ask, how will this influence marketing, messages and consumer behavior? On one hand advertising inventory could scale to the heavens, with ad space available on every coffee cup, creating poorer response as consumers tune out a cluttered marketing world. On the other, clever brands could learn to sponsor products just as they now do cable television, allowing consumers to get their Starbucks coffee for free if they don't mind a disposable cup shouting promotions at them. If GPS could tie screens on every object around you to your own personal location, and your needs and value could be identified, we could enter a brilliant new world of marketing personalization / dystopian universe of Big Brother tracking (depending on your point of view).

One thing is for certain: the nimbus of information that once was seen only through PC web portals will become unbound, unhinged and unwired, spread through a million touchpoints. Time to go: we have a client call on coffee-cup number 2.