AAA White Paper The political economy of informal events, 2030 | Page 79

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A Chinese policewoman
uses sunglasses with
built-in facial recognition
8. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AS AN IMPROVER OF
EVENTS, NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR THEM
Young people today do show some signs of social media fatigue, and
of wanting face-to-face interactions. Yet there is no reason why still
more use of screens in the future will automatically be accompanied
by more fondness for live informal events. Take computer games,
for instance. That activity, which regularly involves tens of millions
of young people, will still stage live, in-the-flesh gamer events of
different sorts. But it is also likely to move into ‘events’ that, one way
or another, are based on Virtual Reality.
In fact the relationship between IT and informal events, like
that between IT and many other social phenomena (for example,
transport), is hardly ever a simple substitution of the virtual for
the real. It’s subtler than that. IT will reach more people in new
ways to tell them about informal events. It will make security
around events easier, and the entertainment itself more varied
and surprising. And, as with today’s exhibitions, data collected
through IT will help event organisers reach people after the show is
over, and helping those people derive more pleasure from it.
Already social media help popularise events before they occur. Thus, in
the future, events can expect more use of
software-enabled wristbands, and – within
certain limits – of airport-style baggage checks,
biometrics (including face recognition) and
drone surveillance. Hopefully, too, the slow
rise of fifth-generation mobile networks,
or 5G, will allow incidents to be reported
to the authorities, and alerts to signaled to
audiences, more effectively.
In stage performance, the use of screens,
lighting and lasers will obviously be the
subject of continuing innovation. What,
however, might turn out to be more significant
to live acts as we move toward 2030 is a recent
advance in IT made by Japan. There, Chiba
university has now made a long-awaited hardware breakthrough: the
projection of high-quality 3D holography as video, where computing
powers with more than 10 frames per second and one trillion pixels
per frame are required. We can expect animated holography to be a
significant part of dozens of informal events by 2030.
What about after the show? Already electronic proximity beacons
track people’s individual movements from stage to stage – so that
promoters can send them timed, personalised lists of all the acts they
saw. More inventive IT-based methods of audience follow-up will no
doubt emerge before long.
By 2030, IT will both complicate and enhance acoustics. More