L - R: Carter, Neumann, Kii, Sato
On my recent business trip to Tokyo, I had the opportunity to have lunch with my good friend Hajime Kii and his family. I know Kii-san from when he was a senior executive at NTT America and I was working at CITI at Columbia University. Kii-san was kind enough to arrange a visit to NTT DOCOMO’s Future Station for me and WIK’s CEO Karl-Heinz Neumann while we were in town. At its Future Station, DOCOMO presents a short film showcasing its high-concept vision of its product and service offerings for the near-term future.
I had mentioned to Kii-san that I had seen it in 2001 as part of a delegation from Columbia University including Eli Noam and Robert Pepper (now at Cisco Systems). The 2001 version included a short film showed DOCOMO’s vision for wireless communications in the year 2010. Eli and Pepper kept giggling and looking at me because the kid in the 2001 film was named “Ken”. Now that it is 2010, I was clearly interested to compare the 2001 film to the 2010 version and to the products currently offered.
Well, aside from the fact that the kid in the film is now called Hiro, many of the ideas in the 2001 film have made their way into current products and prototypes. After the film we got to tour their showroom. Granted, the floating touch screens are still science fiction; however, products like ITS (Intelligent Transportation Systems), augmented reality, multimedia handsets, mobile commerce, and location-aware services have made it into their cool new handsets. My favorite handset comes with a detachable QWERTY keyboard and a projection monitor. One can use any Bluetooth keyboard (unlike my complaint with the iPhone) and can use the detachable projector to make presentations (movie screen not included). We also were able to play with a protype handset which does augmented reality, allowing you to see what it would be like to have a new car (you can change the style, color, etc.) in your driveway. Dr. Neumann was able to use one of display handsets to buy a drink from a vending machine and buy a Big Mac from a McDonald’s mock-up. Using your cell phone to pay for anything from train tickets to lunch to groceries is completely old hat in Japan. DOCOMO also showed us two new handsets which have natural wood exteriors.
Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa
The other cool fact I learned from the 2010 film is that the yukio-e woodblock prints of the master Hokusai Katsushika captured the movement of water at 1/5000 of a second. (By comparison, most digital SLR cameras are not faster than 1/1000 of a second.)
Insight: DOCOMO’s Future Station is very cool. While visiting the Future Station, I was like a kid in a candy shop on Christmas morning. Being there reminded me why I got into telecommunications in the first place – because tomorrow will always a brighter day with bigger (smaller), better, faster and Cooler Stuff. I will have to go back in 2020. I will give you an update then.
