ANDY HOBSBAWM

The pace of digital innovation is astonishing. It's impossible to imagine life without the web, smartphones, social networks. And yet the consumer products and everyday objects all around us are still essentially dumb.

We've got the science, we've had the debate. The moral imperative is on the table. Great creativity is needed to take it all, make it simple and sharp. To make it connect. To make it make people want to act.

Among many other things, a smartphone functions as a handheld digital sensor for the physical world. In other words, we don't necessarily need our real world things to be directly connected, when the Web interface in our mobile devices provides the network access and intelligence.

Great creativity is astonishingly, absurdly, rationally, irrationally powerful.

Among many other things, a smartphone functions as a handheld digital sensor for the physical world. In other words, we don't necessarily need our real world things to be directly connected, when the Web interface in our mobile devices provides the network access and intelligence.

The pace of digital innovation is astonishing. It's impossible to imagine life without the web, smartphones, social networks. And yet the consumer products and everyday objects all around us are still essentially dumb.

Great creativity is astonishingly, absurdly, rationally, irrationally powerful.

We've got the science, we've had the debate. The moral imperative is on the table. Great creativity is needed to take it all, make it simple and sharp. To make it connect. To make it make people want to act.