Networked screens are now present in nearly every aspect of our lives – they’re in our pockets, in cars and, increasingly, on our wrists and home appliances. But does everything really need a digital display? Is there a better, more human way to interact with tech than prodding at a visual interface?

Chinese internet giant Alibaba is introducing a VR payment system. After the success of its ‘pay with a selfie’ campaign in 2015, which allowed mobile shoppers to pay via facial recognition, the online marketplace will soon allow shoppers to pay simply by nodding their heads.

Can people’s interactions be truly intimate on social media? How can digital communications be more private? And what happens after chatbots? In this part of the 2017 Expert Outlook series, we speak to three communications experts about what’s changing in the way people interact globally.

Voice recognition tech is becoming increasingly advanced, leading more people to use it in their everyday lives; the virtual assistant market is set to be worth $3.07 billion by 2020, and Amazon expects to sell ten million Echo devices in 2017 alone. But do people really want to chat to their devices?