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БогородицаSo, this is maybe a little old, but that’s life. Anyway – awhile back these two videos from Microsoft and RIMM popped up in my google reader and they show these two companies ideas on the future. Take a look:

Got it? Now let’s assume that RIM’s vision of the future isn’t incredibly banal still filled with nested menus, people happily being provisioned completely sterile work environments and theft prevention that only remotely wipes data, doesn’t even try to track it down – two bits of functionality that already exist today. Let’s presume that RIM had at least an interesting vision of the future.

Microsoft’s video at least had that much, sure some of it didn’t make sense or didn’t seem possible, but hey – it’s the future so who knows? Right? I’ll buy it, it looked neat and given enough computer smarts probably a lot of stuff that doesn’t seem possible now becomes possible in the future.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter. If you’re a serious company with a serious vision of the future, why would you codify that vision into a video and then put it forth into the world years before you expect that vision to arrive? A – it’s almost certainly not the future that will arrive, we’re very bad predictors time and time again. And B – you’re going to tell your competition how you’re looking at things?

So given A and B, it’s either not really how you see the future, so in general was just a waste of everyone’s time – yours and mine. Or it really is how you think things are going to play out and you think that showing everyone your direction years in advance is somehow good for you? Which… you know… doesn’t seem like all that great of an idea? Punches and telegraphing and all that?

If you look at companies that are continued innovators in technology, let’s call that Apple, Amazon and Google for scale, you don’t see them telling the world how they see the future playing out. They show the world how they are making the future happen now. They just keep releasing innovation – releasing. innovation.

Clearly RIM and Microsoft are currently not thought of as the most innovative companies. Microsoft is showing fighting spirit here on fronts like Kinect (opening that up! great move.) as well as what looks to be a very strong contender into the tough smart phone market with it’s Mango release of Windows Phone. But these videos are going to convince anyone that they’re thought leaders, what convinces people of that are continued innovation around things like Kinect and Mango and Xbox.