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It’s 2023: PMs and designers should be talking about ambient computing
Ambient computing is creeping up on us. If you’re a PM or UX designer, you should care because our jobs are going to change fundamentally.
Web3. Metaverse. Crypto. Elon Musk. You’ve probably heard all of these tech buzzwords already. Let’s add a new one to our repertoire: Ambient Computing.
Ambient computing refers to “always-on” hardware and software technologies that allow users to consume digital content and services by interacting with their surroundings. We’re still at the beginning of the curve here but I predict over the next decade, there will be a fundamental shift in how we consume the internet. We will move away from our dependency on the smartphone, towards a device-agnostic consumption model.
A brief history of the Operating System
To understand why ambient computing is coming, we need to look at how we got here first.
Desktop OS — Mac vs Windows (80s-90s)
Take yourself back to the time when Bill Gates wasn’t a billionaire and Steve Wozniak was the brains behind Apple Computers. In the late eighties and through the early nineties, there was a fierce battle to take the…
