In the next year, I predict most handset manufacturer and carriers will release operating systems whose central organizing principle will be some rendition of a social address book. Some may argue it will be an attempt to simply replicate the success of web-based social media services like Facebook, MySpace and Flickr. That may be part of it, but  I argue that it is an acknowledgment that the current mental and interaction models we use on mobile devices (borrowed from the PC) simply become brittle and broken in the mobile context. Applications, browsers, search… these are legacy from the PC. We have tried to make them work on mobile device with limited but crippled success.

Gestural interfaces, location-based services, micro-applications and social address books are all pointing toward new trends that I believe will revolutionize the way we think about interfaces - a revolution that will be lead through the tangible interfaces developed in the mobile space.

It’s easy to get caught up in the fanfare of each - and they individually are worthy of discourse and consideration. However, the common theme they share is the concept of connections between stuff - relationships - the dotted lines between people, objects, places and data.

I’ve written before about my interest and … well, frankly, my love affair with the idea of organic interfaces. I am intrigued by interfaces that are fluid, extensive, and anticipatory - interfaces that inherently understand and embrace the relationships between stuff in the world. Social address books as an organizing principle are a tangible instantiation of an emergent and important trend for mobile interactions. Mobile interfaces of the future will be less about finding and sorting information in application silos, and more about the connections between people, data and places.