Anticipation is a personal emotion. It's a contextual expectation of what's "next". Similar concepts include forecasting, estimating, and predicting. These processes are each the result of gathering information, analyzing, and preparing for an educationally assumed result. How does our routine interaction with digital technology effect our standard of anticipation? A "standard" assumes that our digital culture agrees on universal anticipations. These may include digital-interaction response-times, product-releases, information updates, etc... The common thread between these types of anticipations is waiting; and our standard for waiting is thinning, nearing expectations of instant gratification. We anticipate instant results when using our digital technology; Do those expectations translate to our physical environment? If so, how?
Think about your most recent experience in a public rest room. How many surfaces did you actually touch in order to activate your anticipated result. Automatic doors, toilet flushers, faucets, and hand dryers help to make your public rest room experience as sanitary as possible. But [automatic devices] do something else as well. They remove the physical maneuver associated with completing a task, and replace it with a gestural wave of the hand. These gestures signify our new standard of anticipation. Things [events] now occur instantly at the wave of your hand.
How might this inspire architecture on a grander scale. Will we begin to expect walls to reconfigure automatically in response of the time-of-day or quantity of people in a space? These transformative qualities are becoming more popular in spaces that need to be more flexible or have better performance IE School Classrooms, Performing Arts Centers, and Sports Stadiums. Our new standard of anticipation requires our architectural environment to become more intelligent, more interactive, and to take more responsibility for anticipating our "next" move.