Imagining the future can be difficult. This isn't to say that we can't imagine it to be whatever we want, full of radical change, sweeping waves of disruption, step-changes in technology, unforeseen behaviors, sci-fi innovation etc.  And given the opportunity to devise scenarios depicting the future, many scenario authors, "professional" and layperson alike, tend to want to go for the gold, taking the opportunity to pack storylines with massive change. As Jamais Cascio wrote a few months back in a meditation on this issue, even futurists create pictures of a future that has "Changed Your Life Forever."

Personas, essentially the personal form of a scenario when used in a futuring context, frequently suffer from overcooking. Whether created by bright and well-meaning designers or strategists or an ad-pitch team looking to convince a client, they often depict lives of the perfect user/consumer, whose average day is an unending sequence of early adopter behaviors or optimal use cases, complete with flawless experiences of new products.

Driving to pick up my children the other day, I was reminded what the future is really going to be like. I happened to catch the top of the hour news on BBC World Service, one of the benefits of satellite radio. As I listened to the top headlines, I was reminded of a conversation with Bruce Sterling some months ago about how strange the world is right now, even without adding any "juice" to the plotline. Our consensus was that it's harder every day to do what we do in foresight, or even in the more creative field of science fiction writing, because, as the saying goes, truth is frequently stranger than fiction these days. In a period of accelerated change, whatever the drivers, we are seeing the unusual play out daily at the moment, right before our eyes.

What's the connection to BBC headlines? Stories about the current price of oil ($145 at the time I heard the news report), an African-American presumptive presidential nominee (Barack Obama), a pocket-sized, touchscreen computing device (iPhone), and a major bank failure (IndyMac), all rolled by, sprinkled alongside the mundane stories of human interest, crime, politics as usual, and other usual suspects of a newscast. Despite a few interesting nuggets and some top headlines that would have sounded outlandish and breathtaking a decade ago, it wasn't a breathtaking litany of staggering disruptions or earthshattering advances in science, and my day wasn't much different than the day or week or month before.

There is a purpose to depicting radical scenarios--they help us decide what we might do in the face of very different circumstances, and therefore be somewhat better prepared should they come to pass. But increasingly the tendency among both their authors and users alike is to veer too far to the absolute - focusing on total disruption without worrying about the legacy relationships, investments, commitments, etc. that are still in place. When this happens, they become the strategic equivalent of escapism. 

While an average day doesn't sell scenarios as well, it does present a normal context against which alternatives, be they product concepts, government policies, or what have you, can be considered. The world remains a mix of the chaotic, surprising, and just plain bland, even if the mix does occasionally get slightly out of balance. We have very, very few moments that "Change Your Life Forever." We have many more where we live through very incremental change, just like today. It's a pretty safe bet that, in the big scheme of things, tomorrow, and probably next year, is going to be to a high degree just like the one described on the radio last week. Painting this picture should be the easy part. The hard part is identifying which of these very incremental points of change in the near term may become major drivers of our world's evolution in the long term.

Lost in the noise of sky-rocketing energy prices, data on the business downturn, and the start of an uncertain summer was news last week that Fedex Kinkos--that hybrid of the world's largest delivery company and your corner copy shop--is changing its name to Fedex Office. According to the company, losing the quirky Kinko's brand reflects a recognition that the company provides more than just copies, delivery and office supplies, and has become, as a company spokesman called it, "...a back office for small businesses and a branch office for medium to large businesses and mobile professionals.''

The name change does indeed reflect the company's true role, albeit about 5 years too late, that Fedex Kinkos is part of the invisible ecosystem of work, alongside Panera, Starbucks, Homewood Suites, Avis and many other scattered pieces of the emerging platform that includes airlines, mobile operators, office supply stores, restaurants, bookstores, and anywhere else today's fluid workers find refuge. It's no longer enough to talk about mobile work, which implies a clear break from "fixed" or in-office work, as a distinct area. As the economy has increasingly shifted toward part-time, contract, service-based work spread over a larger number of "workers," this ideal of the road warrior has really in effect morphed into the work-lifer, for whom  professional work, community activities and private family life are all just interstitial moments, blurred together.

But back to today's headlines and the rebranding of Fedex Office, and the convergence of these two factors presents an interesting opportunity. As the economist Paul Krugman recently pointed out, we are increasingly stranded in suburbia by a combination of high energy prices. I would extend this to add clogged infrastructure and the emerging work-life economy to say we may be reaching an important inflection point where we are increasingly dependent on locally focused, cellular communities of work, constrained by energy costs and inability to move, reliant less and less on the eroding prospects of a traditional work pattern and more and more on local resources and intellectual capital of other professionals nearby--sort of a resilient co-working model.

What are the implications for the companies in the invisible ecosystem described above? For one, Fedex Office should clear out some of those jumbo copiers, or buy out next door's failing coffee shop, and open co-working centers (with childcare) to service the millions of work-lifers who are or will be stranded close by. In the next few years we are bound to see a large part of the workforce who are not able to afford to drive their regional sales territory or make the hour commute to an office or afford assistance at home (hence the childcare), but who want to be connected to each other and need a place to be productive and networked that isn't a coffee shop.

Companies should recognize they are part of this ecosystem and begin to integrate it to provide better, more seamless value to their common users. A few laptop carrels stuck in the corner with a $5-a-minute charge for access won't do it any more. Prepare for the exodus of the modern workforce to the suburbs and actually become the new way to office.

With the rumored release of the next-generation iPhone coming next week has come a spate of sub-rumors about the iconic device carrying true GPS, deeper integration with Google Maps, augmented reality applications and other, similar predictions and fantasies. If even some of it comes to pass, the growing drip-drip of location-based applications that has been sparked by falling GPS prices, increased integration in mobile devices and a steady trickle of mapping technologies could turn into a flood, taking us into a totally new phase of location-related technology interaction.

One outcome of this growth has been the increased amount of location data available, and a new focus on ways to collect, interpret and use that data, giving birth to the new area of reality mining. By using location and movement data, researchers at different institutions and companies are using reality mining to understand everything from the nature of real social networks to preferred modes of transportation to gaining better insights into epidemiology. More than simply looking at limited sets of data from individuals' mobile phones, reality mining looks for patterns in large sets of movements in order to design better solutions for our lives. Of course, group learnings can also be applied to the individual level, delivering everything from more accurately targeted advertising to more timely security responses to threats.

Privacy will be an increasingly important issue as reality mining moves into the commercial/governmental sphere. Questions of tracking individuals, ascertaining information about not only place but mode of behavior ("We know the suspect took a bus to the victim's house, not drove, because of the speed and pattern of his movement, your honor", or "You must have been drunk because of the path you took from here to there") will be raised. Might you get an SMS ad on your mobile offering you discounted energy water because it's hot and you are walking, versus a discount on gas because you have been driving non-stop for a long period of time? Doubtless we'll see both of these examples in the future. For now, just know that you may soon become a Sim in someone else's analysis.

Ed Note:  Two days after writing this, word has come out about a project to track 100,000 mobile users outside the US in a reality mining research project. More will undoubtedly surface.

Businessweek carries an interesting review of some recent tracking data on Web and mobile usage which reveals an increasing divergence in the way Americans use the Web depending on what day of the week it is. In short, the data from mobile tracking firm M:Metrics shows that during the week, we tend to use our PCs for the Web, which makes sense as we are often at work or home or school, in some fixed location with a deeper task at hand. Come the weekend, however, mobile Web usage spikes as we increasingly use mobile data connections to find a movie, search for a yard sale, look at an apartment, or all of the personal/social things we do on weekends.

The breakdown appears to be between mandatory and discretionary actions: what we have to do, versus what we want to do. The change has likely been fueled by the larger numbers of Web-friendlier smartphones we carry over from our day jobs into our private lives. We are able to bring more powerful tools with us as we go about our domestic chores and personal errands, pointing the way to a new set of functions both for the devices we carry, and the sites we visit.

Mobilizing the discretionary Web, on sites such as the popular Craigslist, which sees a big spike on weekends from mobile traffic, or sites of major retailers, such as grocery stores, big box retailers (imagine a mobile-optimized Ikea site, complete with in-store turn-by-turn location-based functionality and QR codes! It could turn a shopping nightmare into an in-store expedition.), or movie theatre or restaurant chains would speed the growth in the so-called "weekend Web".

Smartphone makers continue to adapt toward consumer markets, adding better cameras, GPS, and better screens but haven't yet begun to add more applications that recognize this difference in behavior between work and play. For the moment, the focus is on body color, sleeker lines and maybe media playback. The next step is adding content and applications that actually fit with the way we live our lives, not just in the office, but when we relax and enjoy time with family and friends.

Today marks the US release of the Wii Fit, a new exergaming accessory for the runaway favorite gaming system by Nintendo. Having watched and described the emergence of the exergaming field for several years now, Wii Fit validates a forecast I made several years ago -- that the growth of exergaming as a casual play outlet would eventually lead to its being used as a substitute for gym-based exercise for some. The combination of accessibility (it's in your own living room - home turf for decades of casual entertainment-driven fitness), casual play, and usability for multiple activities makes this new accessory a potential killer app for today's digital lifestyles. Equally as important, the appeal to non-core gamers in the traditional sense extends the Wii franchise even further into female and boomer demographics.

Exergaming today is a double-edged sword, however. On the one hand, it may get more people off the sofa and at least moving their bodies, and hopefully burning a few calories and strengthening something besides their thumbs. This is the line that will be pushed by exergaming enthusiasts, eager to position the field as a needed solution to couch-bound slothfulness. In a country where the rate of childhood obesity has more than tripled in recent years, we should be open to new ways of chipping away at a problem of crisis proportions.

However, it also provides an easier out for those who don't want to take the necessary steps to address their own health issues or that of people in their care. Schools use the Wii and older games like Dance Dance Revolution as a substitute for physical education. Doubtless, institutions will buy Wii Fit as an additional "healthy" way to appeal to constituents written off as the "video game" generation, or otherwise unmotivated. I was in a very large chain gym recently (disclaimer: I am also a fitness instructor on my "non-futurist" hours) and watched as gym members hopped on a new cycling video game, for lack of a better description, and peddled along with their on-screen avatar as a means of making the ride more interesting and, well, entertaining. This was happening just feet away from a brand new cycling studio, complete with state-of-the-art spinning cycles. Given the choice, cycling to a video screen will be more appealing to some, even if the results don't compare with those achievable on the real bike. This is the dangerous road we venture down in exergaming today.

A world full of gamers spend their days and nights caring for and feeding virtual avatars, dressing them and sculpting them to make them look more attractive, hitting the "jump" button to grab extra "health" points, looking after tomagotchis to keep them from withering and dying, and waking their sims up to go to work or mine gold to build and develop their online lives. We spend millions of hours each year cultivating the "lives" of these digital representations, and as a society we'd rather spend money and attention launching a new game title than divert a fraction of that attention, effort, and skill on looking after ourselves.

Our challenge to game designers, fitness companies and anyone else involved in these fields is to find better ways to connect our need for entertainment with direct personal wellness benefit. We see hints of this with Nike+ and similar fitness ecosystems that are emerging (watch for an upcoming paper from us on the topic). We see possibilities in augmented reality technology that brings play into real spaces. New combinations of mobile, location and personal sensing technologies are opening new doors for technology-aided wellness. But we hope industries involved, and important venues such as schools and health care facilities will take care to strike a balance between entertaining and engaging the public with actual, sustainable health improvement. With public health in a state of crisis due to issues such as adult and childhood obesity, industry should resist pushing more video games behind the shield of physical fitness. Hopefully Nintendo et al will keep social wellbeing in mind as they push out the boundaries of exergaming.