tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49584517291865385032024-03-05T07:28:43.701-08:00Social Nodeon the social consequences of emerging tech Alvis Brigishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16168303630787495118noreply@blogger.comBlogger62125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4958451729186538503.post-28742959891570713262017-01-13T16:21:00.003-08:002017-01-16T22:26:08.397-08:00Building Human-Level A.I. Will Require Billions of People<div dir="ltr">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>The Great AI hunger appears poised to quickly replace and then exceed the income flows it has been eliminating. If we follow the money, we can confidently expect millions, then billions of machine-learning support roles to emerge in the very near-term, majorly limiting if not reversing widespread technological unemployment.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Human-directed </span><span id="docs-internal-guid-579d6cb3-95ae-b1a9-1a4c-d9ba0f285d8d"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_learning" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">machine learning</span></a></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/magazine/the-great-ai-awakening.html" target="_blank">emerged</a> as the <a href="https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-main-differences-between-artificial-intelligence-and-machine-learning" target="_blank">dominant </a></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-main-differences-between-artificial-intelligence-and-machine-learning" target="_blank">process</a> for the creation of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weak_AI" target="_blank">Weak AI</a> such as language translation, computer vision, search, drug discovery and logistics management. I</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ncreasingly, it appears <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_AI" target="_blank">Strong AI</a>, aka <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligence" target="_blank">AGI</a> or "human-level" AI, will be achieved by bootstrapping machine learning at scale, which will require billions of </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">humans <a href="https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/machinelearning/2016/10/17/the-power-of-human-in-the-loop-combine-human-intelligence-with-machine-learning/" target="_blank">in-the-loop</a>. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqKEUVLrXeehSiey9U4gHUZPqwbSubWPgLv3TFsaC0rPBNNpUsMe1OL6jw5TEBxd2-RRbthBHcH_gFXMvp3ryArsdQSVlIRHQe85PmeRhjWog0ahK4bhNMtgOmRplIBCPeY4QbGynHnpFQ/s1600/pyramids.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqKEUVLrXeehSiey9U4gHUZPqwbSubWPgLv3TFsaC0rPBNNpUsMe1OL6jw5TEBxd2-RRbthBHcH_gFXMvp3ryArsdQSVlIRHQe85PmeRhjWog0ahK4bhNMtgOmRplIBCPeY4QbGynHnpFQ/s400/pyramids.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-579d6cb3-9948-adb4-ffd7-dc58a07f2065"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How does human-in the-loop machine learning work? The process of training a neural net to do something useful, say the ability to confidently determine whether a photo has been taken indoors or outside, requires feeding it input content, in this case thousands of different photographs, allowing it to generate its own model of the photographs, correcting, re-generating and improving the model until the program has achieved a high enough confidence to perform the sorting behavior automatically. This neural model can then be applied to other content and ultimately requires less correction by humans in the future. Thus, work has been done and added to the broader body of machine learning knowledge.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">One can then imagine that, over time, as these models are encoded, fewer and fewer humans will be needed to train up useful AI... Wrong!</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Rather, as the companies </span></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">now trailblazing AI (Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Tesla, Uber, etc) have generated more value through machine learning, they've realized that 1) machine learning can be applied to infinitely more domains/problems, 2) that more complex, creative problems require more human-in-the-loop intervention, and 3) that more value can be created by integrating the machine learning they've already done - a cumulative effect, eg Google's recent <a href="https://research.googleblog.com/2016/11/zero-shot-translation-with-googles.html" target="_blank">breakthrough</a> in translation, which ultimately required billions or trillions of human-in-the-loop (including you, if you ever used Google Translate) machine learning cycles to finally break through to another level of automatic functionality. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To recap, machine learning requires </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">1) some well-educated machine learning professionals, 2) many more less-educated machine learning guides and 3) </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">access to large swaths of structured content, 4) access to previously encoded machine learning. And the market-driven desire to apply it to new problems sets is growing very, very quickly. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">With </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">technological unemployment growing as a U.S. and global problem, and economic stratification rapidly increasing, many have been wondering how the general human population will earn a living in the transformed economy. </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A few years ago I argued that <a href="https://www.fastcoexist.com/1681839/the-world-needs-18-billion-jobs-but-what-if-they-already-exist" target="_blank">users of social networks could soon start getting paid by the parent companies</a>. Now that a the basic business model surrounding human-directed machine learning, </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">AI and digitized content is emerging, that scenario can be advanced. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As the Great AI Race heats up and more companies, countries and other actors come to realize the narrow and broader potential of human-in-the-loop machine learning, the demand for machine learning pros, machine learning guides and content workers will grow proportionately, driving up their share of the pie as they </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">help to build more intelligent superstructures brick by brick.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The growing competition is also driving up the value of content itself - </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">especially large bodies of structured content. Over time, content producers (including users of search engines and social networks who add value simply through their interactions with those systems) can expect to receive more value for their work or property.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> AI-generated revenues continue to grow, additional billions, even trillions of dollars will flow to super-lucrative machine learning processes and, ultimately, into the digital pockets of the masses essential to building the different aspects of AI. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The amount of value shared with users will depend on the size of the pie. With Kurzweil's <a href="http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns" target="_blank">Law of Accelerating Returns</a> in full effect, that pie is likely to grow MASSIVELY. The limits to growth appear to be our finite ability to capture, sort and export information about our lives and the universe around us. </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In theory, the total pie is limited only by the total information contained in our universe. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">From one perspective, this process can be viewed as a market-driven acceleration of science. From another, it's an evolution of the economy from Industrial Age to Knowledge Age. Looking at the big picture, it sure looks like mass-scale Human/AI symbiosis that ultimately drives up machine, human and planetary intelligence by digitizing the vast universe of information surrounding us.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Seems pretty natural to me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">JFK was the </span><a href="http://like%20him%20or%20not%2C%20donald%20trump%20marks%20another%20step%20forward%20for%20the%20role%20of%20communication%20in%20the%20presidency./" style="font-family: "helvetica neue", arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">first TV President</a><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. He and his successors exuded a distinctly <i>presidential</i> vibe as they communicated confidently to the masses, primarily through color video, usually behind a podium or in high-power settings, on a monthly or sometimes weekly basis.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Donald Trump is the first Web & Reality TV President. </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">He spent a decade as host and producer of the hit show </span><i style="font-family: "helvetica neue", arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">The Apprentice </i><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">and exudes a distinctly <i>colloquial</i> vibe across cable and the web. Trump prefers titanic business settings like board rooms and communicates to the masses at a daily or even hourly rate, even after the election. Twitter is his pulpit.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Trump is a seasoned, self-aware, master content producer AND actor. </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In sports, the equivalent is a player/coach, a Peyton Manning or LeBron. </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">He's calculatedly sloppy and unpredictable, which appears to boost his authenticity and watchability. Most importantly, he's relentless.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Trump's magic media formula: </span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Trump is entertaining and highly watchable. He understands how to produce good drama, keeps messages simple and repetitively hammers home points he wants to get through noise. His content gets people talking, furthering his reach.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Trump uses social media effectively. He's mastered Twitter, Facebook and YouTube and uses these more intuitively, thanks to years spent in entertainment, furthering his reach.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Trump producers content at a high volume. YouTube producers and social media marketers know that if you stop feeding your audience, even for just a week, they will disappear. Above all else, Trump understands how to maintain and grow a captive audience and maximize reach. He can saturate mass media to his benefit and the detriment of other signal.</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Like him or not, President-Elect Donald Trump is a highly entertaining, dramatic, calculating, content and social signal master with skills and a team tailored for contemporary media. His election victory, not unlike JFK's, can be attributed, in part, to a modernized communication playbook (which may also be at work in places like Russia and the Phillipines) and </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">marks a notable shift in American sociopolitical landscape. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Donald Trump may be the second Actor-in-Chief, but he's definitely the first Producer, or more fittingly, <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/chris-christie-called-trump-entertainer-in-chief-article-1.2544961" target="_blank">Entertainer-in-Chief</a>. And he's got the spotlight... for now.</span><br />
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<br />Alvis Brigishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16168303630787495118noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4958451729186538503.post-86091269693465962462016-02-18T07:27:00.000-08:002016-02-18T07:27:00.414-08:00IBM Watson AI XPrize Pits AI vs. Human/AI Teams<div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">XPRize and IBM have announced the <b>IBM Watson AI XPRIZE</b>, a multi-stage Cognitive Computing Competition </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">with </span>a $5 million purse that challenges "teams from around the world to develop and demonstrate how humans can collaborate with powerful cognitive technologies to tackle some of the world’s grand challenges." Interestingly, the competition will be open to human/AI hybrid and exclusively AI entrants alike. The contest will culminate in 2020 after a series of IBM's annual "World of Watson" prelim events and draw attention to the human-empowering aspects of Artificial Intelligence. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">May the smartest neural array carry the day.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 24.9999px;">Pre-registration is open now at </span><a href="http://xprize.org/AI" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 24.9999px; transition: color 0.2s;" target="_blank">xprize.org/AI</a><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 24.9999px;">, and detailed guidelines will be announced on May 15, 2016.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://blog.ted.com/ibm-watson-offers-5-million-prize-for-an-ai-x-prize-presented-by-ted/" target="_blank">TED Blog</a></span><span id="goog_1133551637"></span><span id="goog_1133551638"></span><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/"></a></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.xprize.org/ai" target="_blank">XPrize Announcement</a></span></div>
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A handful of Ukrainian government officials, several Ukrainian NGOs and blockchain businesses Ambisafe, Distributed Lab and Kitsoft have announced a partnership<span style="line-height: 19.32px;"> to test and gradually implement a transparent, blockchain-based voting system in Ukraine. The move to the blockchain marks a next logical step in Ukraine's recent experiments with </span><span style="line-height: 19.32px;">e-voting systems.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 19.32px;"><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1x9Iw6QxHDsldGQrvIGroBAaG6mx0Zfbgld6R4FhHn4k/edit" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Press Release</span></a></span></div>
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<a href="https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/ukraine-government-plans-to-trial-ethereum-blockchain-based-election-platform-1455641691" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Analysis</span></a></div>
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Alvis Brigishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16168303630787495118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4958451729186538503.post-90544923352963127592013-11-05T11:27:00.000-08:002015-08-26T16:32:59.762-07:00Ingress - A Precursor of the World to Come<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With over 500K active players, </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingress_(game)" style="line-height: 1.15; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ingress</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, the Google-funded augmented reality game for Android, is about to </span><a href="http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/04/googles-ingress-exits-beta/" style="line-height: 1.15; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">exit Beta</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and already marks a notable step forward in gaming and interactive media. As it scales, it could have a major psychological and material impact on our world.</span><span id="docs-internal-guid-1f5d4fae-29ba-4121-5588-c319a780e35e"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ingress as Indicator:</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Futurists, tech bloggers, entrepreneurs, investors and sci-fi writers all spend much time scouring the world for interesting signals from the edge to identify emerging trends or even the next big thing. In the past decade, many have zeroed in on gamification, augmented reality and the ongoing mobile explosion as </span><a href="http://www.metaverseroadmap.org/" style="line-height: 1.15; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">important zones of development</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Residing squarely at the intersection of these potent growth areas is Ingress, the quirky augmented reality game that hearkens to visions of the future contained in works like </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash" style="line-height: 1.15; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Snow Crash</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otherland" style="line-height: 1.15; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Otherland</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End" style="line-height: 1.15; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rainbows End</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. As I’ve played the game (I’m up to Level 7 of 8), I’ve come to believe that it’s an important precursor of things to come. </span><br />
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-1f5d4fae-29ba-4121-5588-c319a780e35e"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gameplay:</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Created by </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niantic_Labs" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Niantic Labs</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, an internal Google startup that’s technically autonomous from the parent company, Ingress is both simple and very complex. Fundamentally, it splits players into two teams, Resistance & Enlightenment, that play in the context of a sci-fi storyline that progresses week-to-week. The two massive sides battle, in real-time, to control and link portals located at real-life places of interest such as libraries, museums, post offices, restaurants, murals, etc. You play by walking or driving around to portals and capturing them, then linking the portals together into triangles called control fields. Whichever team has the highest # of human population contained beneath their control fields is considered the current global leader. Notably, players can also earn points for submitting new portal by providing GPS tagged location photos.</span></span></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-1f5d4fae-29ba-4121-5588-c319a780e35e"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Flying Under the Radar: </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Boasting a large, highly engaged player base, Ingress is a fascinating case study on multiple levels. But it’s been able to fly under the radar largely due to the popular perception that it’s purely a game. Expect that perception to change as the Ingress platform continues to evolve and bloggers and other experts continue to notice its traction and potential impact on information gathering, work and social interaction.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: large; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">10 reasons to pay attention to Google’s great Ingress experiment</span></span></h2>
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<span style="font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Hanke Factor: </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ingress is the brainchild of </span><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/bruceupbin/2012/11/08/the-niantic-project-what-is-google-up-to/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">John Hanke</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, the creator of Keyhole, which was purchased by Google and then became Google Earth. Hanke </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hanke" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">went on to work</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> as Google’s VP of Product Management overseeing </span><span style="background-color: white; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the impressive Geo division (Google Earth, Maps, Places, Local, StreetView, SketchUp, and Panoramio) and then created Niantic Labs as an autonomous entity under the Google umbrella. He’s a </span><a href="http://www.metaverseroadmap.org/participants.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">big-thinker</span></a><span style="background-color: white; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and achiever with a great feel for launching geo-products and platforms utilized by billions who is unlikely to waste his time on something not-massive. In light of CEO Larry Page’s focus on projects with massive scaling potential and his reported desire to keep Hanke and Niantic in-house, it’s obvious that Google views Ingress as more than just a game. Among other things, it’s an attempt to create a new mobile-phone-based system that can extend Google’s information gathering abilities into the rapidly emerging geosocial sphere. </span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Serious Traction: </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In just under a year of closed beta </span><a href="http://decodeingress.me/2013/08/19/interview-with-niantics-john-hanke/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">500k+ users</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> are actively playing Ingress. I was lucky to receive an early invite and have played on-and-off since January. I very much enjoy the game, though many of my less techy friends regard it as big time-suck. Much like foursquare, it’s mostly appealing to geeks, gamers and early adopters. What sets Ingress apart is its well-designed gameplay, competitive structure and compelling secondary world & storyline. With some basic tweaks, it could relatively easily become an informational gusher for Google Places, which should make Yelp nervous and Foursquare incredibly so.</span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Augmented Engagement:</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> To date, there are very few examples of </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">augmented or mediated</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> reality games capable of garnering user participation and changing their real-world behavior. </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocaching" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Geo-caching</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> has been around for decades, but is a lone-wolf game with limited adoption. </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foursquare" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Foursquare</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> was a breakout success, but appears to have stalled somewhat. Considering the level of participation required, cooperation required and sheer # of active players (who spend a lot of time coordinating with one another and traveling from portal to portal), Ingress, to my mind, is the most successful augmented reality game on Earth to date. This augmented engagement accomplishment is an important benchmark for a new class of technology that will likely power or catalyze new work and entertainment behaviors. Naturally it’s Google that has perceived this potential value and invested heavily. Mix in rapidly evolving mobile devices such as </span><a href="http://www.google.com/glass/start/what-it-does/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Google Glass</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, which Hanke and the Ingress team are already </span><a href="http://decodeingress.me/2013/08/19/interview-with-niantics-john-hanke/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">messing around with</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and the feasible near-term future of engaged augmented gaming gets very interesting.</span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Next-Gen Gamification:</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The idea that software-mediated games might serve as the interface for many future systems, ranging from social media to ordinary task management, </span><a href="http://socialnode.blogspot.com/2010/08/acceleration-of-gaming.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">caught fire</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in recent years. Made possible by powerful smartphones, growing bandwidth and better backend capabilities, the underlying Ingress platform represents the bleeding-edge of gamification. Some potent future capabilities can be extrapolated from a seemingly innocuous portion of the game that rewards players for submitting GPS tagged photos of interesting locations to become new portals. It’s no stretch to imagine that Google could apply the Ingress backbone to </span><a href="http://pandodaily.com/2012/11/19/googles-ingress-is-more-than-a-game-its-a-potential-data-exploitation-disaster/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">expand its Street View</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> capabilities. Considering that Ingress players are </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">now </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">helping Google to </span><a href="http://socialnode.blogspot.com/2009/02/will-next-google-be-prosumer-based.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">quantify places of interest</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for free</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, imagine how these crowd-sourced mapping efforts will be amplified as cameras improve, bandwidth grows, new sensors are added to mobile phones (such as a miniaturized </span><a href="http://matterport.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Matterport</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> or </span><a href="http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/05/bublcam/?ncid=fb" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bublcam</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> device), augmented reality gets real, gameplay gets better and financial and/or other participation incentives are increased.</span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">RL Social Interaction:</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> A popular and valid criticism of social media and video games is that they fuel anti-social, glued-to-the-screen behavior. Contrasted with the likes of Facebook and Call of Duty, my time playing Ingress actually rewards me for moving about the real world and interacting with other players. My girlfriend and I enjoy playing the game together and find that it can increase our weekly physical exercise (which the game actually measures). It’s refreshing and illuminating to see technology making that possible. At the same time, the flipside of increased gas and bandwidth usage is a valid new age concern and interesting edge indicator.</span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Media Component:</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Ingress utilizes a complex sci-fi storyline to structure its gameplay. Weekly video updates are released by in-game “reporters”. Factions work together in the context of this information to score more points and gain prestige. It’s hard to tell what sort of an impact this has had on engagement, but my guess is that it’s very important for super users and also helps retain general users. Seeing rich media storylines in video games and now in augmented reality games suggests that rich narrative structures and secondary worlds will play an important role in the ongoing roll-out of social media and the </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">metaverse</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Future of Advertising:</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Having worked on a pair of augmented reality startups (</span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDudZmlv1s4&feature=c4-overview&list=UUDY3VVLlAFVHkF8COd7-VbQ" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in3d</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, a 3d modeling and video company, and </span><a href="http://coderden.com/work/swarmado/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Swarmado</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, a content harvesting game for groups at events) I appreciate the importance of an underlying financial model that can support the software, server and human superstructure required by these ventures. By-and-large, advertising is the go-to strategy (though a few choice companies can bypass this if purchased for their sheer informational value or future potential). The holy grail of location-based advertising is generally considered to be any system that can meaningfully drive foot traffic to locations where its currently not. In this regard, Ingress could be a smashing success. Through </span><a href="http://www.talkandroid.com/149400-ingress-updates-app-adds-zipcar-jamba-juice-portals/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">partnerships with Jamba Juice and Zipcar</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Niantic is actively exploring this option. I’ll be following new developments closely to see what strategies emerge and how closely they resemble or depart from those we hatched at in3d and Swarmado. :) There certainly are many potentially lucrative options for any system with a large user base and high engagement. </span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Privacy Concerns: </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Privacy concerns can be tinderboxes that cause unwelcome flare-ups for info-oriented companies like Google. </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Street_View" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Streetview</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> has already drawn serious market backlashes in various regions </span><a href="http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/23/germanys-complicated-relationship-with-google-street-view/?_r=0" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">such as Germany</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. As Google </span><a href="http://futureblogger.net/futureblogger/show/1591-total-systems-quantification-toward-the-everything-graph-" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">inevitably</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> seeks to input more information about the world, the company carefully considers the social and political implications of its behavior. Though Hanke has stated his preference for start-up culture as the reason for Niantic Labs’ separation from parent Google, we should also consider the possibility that Page and Hanke both want to ensure the public and governments view the two as separate entities so as not to add to Google’s image as a great datavore. Ingress has already taken some heat for its info ingestion </span><a href="http://pandodaily.com/2012/11/19/googles-ingress-is-more-than-a-game-its-a-potential-data-exploitation-disaster/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">from bloggers</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and in forums, so that looks to have been a good call. As the project moves forward and the game evolves it could become a critical, perhaps </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">revolutionary</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, tool for systematically gathering information about the world </span><a href="http://socialnode.blogspot.com/2009/02/will-next-google-be-prosumer-based.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">via swarms</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. It could become a mini-Google.</span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Human Resources:</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> 1) Imagine if Ingress, or a version of Ingress based on the same principles or backbone, established itself as a real-deal information generator. Then, 2) imagine if it became a formal part of the broader Google system. Such a gaming system could incrementally reward </span><a href="http://www.fastcoexist.com/1681839/the-world-needs-18-billion-jobs-but-what-if-they-already-exist" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">millions of player-workers</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for the data they input or even serve as a soft “play-in” layer for vetting future Google employees. Utilizing game-based systems for HR purposes could become increasingly effective and popular in the coming decades.</span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Google Factor: </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As listed above, there are many reasons for Google’s interest in a social, info-valuable augmented reality gaming system like Ingress. It’s even conceivable that such a company could pose a future threat to the search behemoth. To my mind, Google’s interest in Ingress reinforces its solid strategic vision of the near-future and that the company is making very smart bets on technologies that could both threaten or amplify its core potential. As a part of Google, Ingress could add billions to its market cap. Independent, or as part of a competitor, the quirky game might have become a major, central threat to Google.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now that Ingress is moving out of Beta (it no longer requires an invite, you can get your Android download </span><a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nianticproject.ingress" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) and </span><a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57605616-94/google-augmented-reality-game-ingress-to-expand-to-ios-in-2014/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">onto iOS in 2014</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, you can confidently expect to catch many more smartphone-wielders to silently, or not so silently, playing the game all around you. Whether you find it to be a gigantic waste of time, gas and bandwidth, or a revolutionary new economic system, it’s an edge indicator that’s at least bound to garner hype and headlines for years to come. </span><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serious_game" style="text-decoration: none;">Seriously.</a></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.geekosystem.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/leonard-nimoy-head-jar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.geekosystem.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/leonard-nimoy-head-jar.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">How much might the highest bidder pay for Steve Jobs' intact brain in a jar? I could see a die-hard collector and history fan dropping 10 or 20 million $ for bragging rights. Maybe more.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">But what if that buyer could count on extracting information from the brain? As science continues to better our understanding of functions like memory, intelligence and cognition, and improves brain-scanning and simulation, we're rapidly developing the ability to identify where and how information resides in brains. Researchers have already <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8556422.stm" target="_blank">distinguished between different recalled memories</a> in brains. So how many more years will pass before mankind can read meaningful portions of the well-preserved brain of a deceased person? 5 years? 10? 20? 50? 100? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The answer may well be 10-20 years, but even if it's 100 - that could seriously affect the price a person or an organization is willing to pay for a brain. The prospect of retro-active brain reading will surely push up the going rate for preserved brains.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">So maybe that raises the top bid for Steve's brain to $50 million, especially considering the advances being made in fields like <a href="http://brainpreservation.org/content/overview" target="_blank">chemo-preservation</a>, which is turning out to be a po</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">werful alternative to freezing.<i> For an in depth overview check out Ken Hayworth of the Brain Preservation Foundation discuss this at length - begins at 3 mins 30 seconds.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Keeping in mind accelerating developments in computer processing, scanning, information theory and brain sciences, how much might a government or group<i> betting on the prospect of retro-active brain reading in the future</i> be willing to pay for the brain of a key scientist, intelligence operative, general, politician, inventor or enemy? The going rate will of course be influenced by available budget and the certainty of the purchasers, but both of those will only rise as we move forward in time. There will most likely be more capital available. There will most likely be greater certainty that brains can be read.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">How much would a company be willing to pay for Steve Jobs' brain (which was not preserved, btw)? How much would the U.S. pay for the intact frozen brain of China's leading cyber strategist? How much</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> would Obama's or Gates' chemo-preserved brain be worth to the Chinese govt? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The only thing I'm really sure of is that the informational value and going $ rate for ALL brains will rise steadily over time as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_change" target="_blank">accelerating change</a>, <a href="http://socialnode.blogspot.com/2009/01/total-systems-quantification-graphing.html" target="_blank">systems quantification</a> and the emerging <a href="http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/29/4-trends-shaping-the-emerging-superfluid-economy/" target="_blank">superfluid economy</a> conspire to allow us to read brains better and make information more useful and transferable - just as the value of rain forests goes up as we figure out the previously discounted or externalized value of the ecosystem and species therein.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Perhaps we'll get to a billion dollar brain purchase by 2030 or 2040. Perhaps the average going rate for a brain will be $1 billion (inflation adjusted) by 2060. Perhaps some foresighted risk-takers are already stock-piling brains. Perhaps there are companies or nations that have already put "brain recovery" clauses in key asset's contracts. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It may seem crazy to contemplate. But such an exercise is much less whacked than it would've seemed just 5 or 10 years ago. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The main point: i</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">t's worth thinking about - maybe someone will retro-actively read your brain one day.</span></div>
</div>Alvis Brigishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16168303630787495118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4958451729186538503.post-2570196356217053292012-04-09T14:38:00.001-07:002012-04-10T14:38:49.410-07:00The Massively Multiplying Mini Me<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The notion of the </span><a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/gary_wolf_the_quantified_self.html" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;" target="_blank">Quantified Self</a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> has been gaining popularity as people figure out more useful things to do with the data captured via their computers, devices and social networks. Many thinkers and companies (like </span><a href="http://www.fitbit.com/" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;" target="_blank">fitbit</a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">) imagine this data can and will be used as a tool for revealing personal heath trends in areas like sleep, exercise, happiness, bodily functions and genetic disease. Some folks like mathematician </span><a href="http://www.stephenwolfram.com/" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;" target="_blank">Stephen Wolfram</a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, who already are mining vast stores of personal data from over the years, believe </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/business/mining-our-personal-data-for-our-own-good.html?_r=2&nl=technology&emc=edit_tu_20120409" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;" target="_blank">introducing the appropriate search algorithms and systems to personal data</a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> will help us with identifying behavioral tendencies and thus help us be more productive. My friend, </span><a href="http://accelerating.org/" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;" target="_blank">ASF</a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> President </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Smart_(futurist)" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;" target="_blank">John Smart</a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, takes a bigger more forward-looking perspective, sees a world in which this data will be used to create a </span><a href="http://www.accelerationwatch.com/lui.html#cybertwin" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;" target="_blank">Digital Twin</a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> for each of us that will fully anticipate our preferences and behavior and greatly assist us in all aspects of life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I think they're all right.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">That said, I believe there are also many less useful, but more entertaining uses for these growing pockets of personal data. Set up correctly, these could not only scale quickly, but also help people to more quickly realize the value of their personal data.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">So here's a near-term Quantified Self product idea to test that assumption: the <b>Mini Me</b> or <b>Pet Me</b>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Imagine taking all of your gmail, facebook, computer and sensor data, then putting it into a simple 3d avatar that looks like you and sits in a window on your facebook page or anywhere else on the web. Perhaps this Pet You is displayed on a wall in your house. You can interact with this Pet You - ask it questions, push it around, introduce unexpected elements like warm apple pie or a swarm of bees. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Its responses all draw on your personal data history. Maybe 1 in 5 responses is really funny or bizarre. You yourself, family, friends or other users can then rate each interaction to guide the development of this Mini You, essentially raising it by rewarding the most desired behavior. (Maybe this growing up portion of the software is called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber" target="_blank">Skinner Box</a>.) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Over time, some of these growing Mini Yous are bound to get interesting. These are the ones that will literally survive and thrive by being shared on different people's facebook pages, via email, in public settings and... this is where it can get <i>really</i> interesting ... as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-player_character" target="_blank">Non Player Characters</a> (NPCs) in bigger virtual environments like <a href="http://secondlife.com/" target="_blank">Second Life</a>, single player big world video games like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyrim" target="_blank">Skyrim</a> & <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassin's_Creed" target="_blank">Assassin's Creed</a>, as cleverer A.I. in first person multiplayer games like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_duty" target="_blank">Call of Duty</a> & <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_(series)" target="_blank">Halo</a>, or as MMOGs like <a href="http://thesims.com/en_us/home" target="_blank">The Sims Online</a>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Currently, leading edge video games utilize flavorful, but simple NPCs based on personality archetypes and solid writing. There's amazing craft that goes into constructing massive storylines and the corresponding character traits, language and behaviors. But NPCs are poised to very quickly grow in complexity as social and quantified self data is introduced into their systems. It occurs to me that whichever company can encourage people to grow the Mini You en mass will create a new category of NPC Unit or Tiny A.I. that can easily be introduced into a wide variety of these games and worlds to beef up, augment or replace these existing NPCs. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I bet that over the next few years these little Mini Mes will start multiplying - initially driven by startups focused on scaling them across social networks. The first few gaming, app or super-simple A.I. companies to create interactive Mini You farm systems that are engaging and entertaining will probably claim dominant positions (just like Foursquare and Instagram did - scale first, get more complex later). It probably won't be the Wolframs, the Googles or the Hard A.I. start-ups that grab the initial user base and the big funding. It'll be some scrappy little team that builds a Mini Me game that's even more fun than <a href="http://www.farmville.com/" target="_blank">Farmville</a>, <a href="http://www.rovio.com/en/our-work/games/view/1/angry-birds" target="_blank">Angry Birds</a> or even the current king of the castle <a href="https://www.facebook.com/playdrawsomething" target="_blank">Draw Something</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /> Then the entrenched right-fit entertainment and communication power houses will scramble to introduce these Mini Yous across their products and services, thus fueling the diffusion fire.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The result? As we use our personal data to grow our little Insulting Irmas, Cowboy Karls, Angry Alvises and Witty Williams we'll not only laugh, be shocked and express outrage - we'll also begin to understand what it means to embed our patterns into popular video games, into highly customized video games, into advertising, into the increasingly complex and pervasive web - and quite probably start earning money or other social credits for these forays. Many unexpected things will occur as these Mini Mes escape, like the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park, and begin to live autonomous lives as <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_blackmore_on_memes_and_temes.html" target="_blank">temes</a>, co-mingling with viruses, surviving and evolving wherever there is silicon to be found, changing the nature of the web.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">At some point the Mini Mes will surely match the capabilities of full on Digital Twins, but expect a lot of product iterations and cycles and evolutionary branching before then. Like life itself, these authorized and unauthorized little genies will resist all sorts of bottling, adding increasingly more simulations of ourselves to the wild west of the web.</span></div>
</div>Alvis Brigishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16168303630787495118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4958451729186538503.post-50488692577586751182012-03-27T18:24:00.002-07:002012-03-27T23:17:39.421-07:00How G+ Can Differentiate from Facebook: Education, Enterprise & Entertainment<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span id="internal-source-marker_0.5151227465830743" style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In terms of sheer adoption, Google Plus has been a smashing success. With over </span><span style="color: orange; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%2B" target="_blank">90 million users</a></span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> it’s the second fastest growing service in all of human history. Still, Google Plus is generally and increasingly viewed as a boring second-tier alternative to Facebook, which is now quite probably diffusing at the fastest rate of any technology to date.</span><br /><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why? Because Facebook has the people, the conversations and massive data inertia & gravity. Its interface is boring, but Facebook isn’t. Many claim to be annoyed by it, but with 950 million+ highly engaged users Facebook has </span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">won</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> social on planet Earth, thus far.</span><br /><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How might Google Plus compete against Facebook’s massive social inertia? For starters, Google could simply use its massive warchest to buy users. But that’s a mighty expensive proposition for users that could simply flee the service if it doesn’t prove sticky enough. </span><br /><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Far more likely, Google Plus will learn to win over users on the fringes, in currently non-mainstream use areas that could become critical differentiating factors for social network adoption and use in the coming years. </span><br /><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are a few social network use categories that Google Plus is poised to rock: Education, Enterprise and Entertainment.</span><br /><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Education: </span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By bundling all of its productivity tools into one big package, Google is already winning over classrooms. If the Google Suite plus G+ becomes the dominant education platform, that means millions of trained Google users will be deeply familiar with and more likely to continue using Google Plus.</span><br /><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Enterprise:</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> By investing in productivity-enhancers like Google Docs, Spreadsheets and Multi-Video Chat, Google has challenged the likes of Microsoft in the workplace. These are positioned at the core of the Google suite. As Google continues to enhance these tools and build new ones, the company sure seems to offer the biggest bang for the buck when it comes to enterprise software. With a culture focused on efficiency and engineering, Google is likely to kill this category.</span><br /><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Entertainment: </span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is the great big wild card, imho. Whereas Apple and Facebook have made major strides in incorporating fun games and/or big Hollywood titles into their products, Google has yet to demonstrate that it really gets entertainment. No doubt the company is learning quickly via YouTube, Google TV and Google Play, but it appears to be a catch-up and keep-pace strategy, not a leap-frog play. Google Plus could certainly benefit from some big game titles, marquee movie releases and an eco-system of cutting edge games and apps. The battle for these properties and developers is already underway. Social web tv will be a reality soon. Who will best understand how to manage and provide programming? </span></span><br />
<span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The advent of fully operational HTML5 and all of the associated in-browser dynamic and multi-player gaming and viewing opportunities will be a major game-changer that could turn the tide vs Facebook. That said, 1) Facebook appears to be more focused on staying ahead of the casual gamer curve, 2) Microsoft (somehow!) has a dominant position in gaming via XBox that it will surely try to leverage into social, and 3) Apple could quickly grab mega market share by spending a few billion of its cash reserves by launching a social network around iTunes and the App Store. Google will need to be clever, by deed or by acquisition, to lead in this sector - but their other stable mega-properties, like Google Earth, Docs, Android, give them some unique insight and could well provide an edge in complex game platform design and operations.</span><br /><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There’s major disruption on the horizon for the major social networks. It’ll be fun to watch it all play out. And by fun, I mean literally - expect to see more better games, pro video titles, amateur video programs and serious games, not to mention major productivity enhancers that will continue to tip the scales in favor of the small business owners and growing prosumer class.</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></span><script type="text/javascript">
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</script></div>Alvis Brigishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16168303630787495118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4958451729186538503.post-70491872754146981152010-12-07T04:33:00.000-08:002010-12-09T11:40:14.449-08:00When American jobs are threatened it’s time to level-up & get social<div style="background-color: transparent; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><ul><li style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">American job losses will continue due to a convergence of big forces including offshoring and automation driven by accelerating change. Service sector jobs will generally not return.</span></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Social web business models are flourishing and point the way to new jobs and efficiencies.</span></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A new class of Super Prosumer companies like Groupon are poised to explode and return more value to people, creating more jobs, but driving price points lower.</span></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We need to encourage the development of Super Prosumer companies on U.S. soil across various industries and become a Prosumer Nation.</span></li>
</ul><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Like Scott Pilgrim, America needs to Level-Up.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The erosion of traditional American jobs continues unabated and we can expect it to steadily worsen. From a macro perspective, there is simply no silver-bullet counter to the converging forces of </span><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-ford/the-truth-about-unemploym_b_428619.html"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">globalization, automation</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, overvalued real estate prices, </span><a href="http://socialnode.blogspot.com/2009/06/us-will-nearly-equal-annual-gdp-in-2011.html"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">national debt</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, mega quantitative easing (printing more U.S. dollars to buy back our bonds so they don’t tank - a </span><a href="http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_50/b4207000020527.htm"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">new round of $600 billion</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> has just been proposed), mounting international resistance to U.S. monetary policy, massive overseas spending (Iraq, Afghanistan) general inefficiencies in govt, defense, education, oversight, and social services. Despite weak </span><a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5geG300ORxNIWXEfOHJIetXzK_RUw?docId=2930b308870a454a8457d0a5de86cdc3"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">signs of life</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in the country’s massive services sector, which comprises an astounding 80% of U.S. jobs, last week’s dismal </span><a href="http://www.forbes.com/2010/12/03/payroll-november-jobs-markets-equities-nonfarm.html?boxes=marketschannelnews"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">jobs report</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> reinforces the steady downhill march.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Though the timing is obviously unfortunate, this should come as no surprise. Forecasters like </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Toffler"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Alvin Toffler</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> have been </span><a href="http://www.gartner.com/research/fellows/asset_165710_1176.jsp"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">pointing out</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the inevitable shift to the Knowledge Age and </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-industrial_society"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">post-industrial society </span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for some 30 years already, while others like </span><a href="http://www.thelightsinthetunnel.com/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Martin Ford</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> argue this transition is likely to be very disruptive and and downright </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Schumpeterian</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> due to the rapid labor displacement that’s being catalyzed by </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_change"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">accelerating technological change</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Well-established generational dynamics like Strauss and Howe’s </span><a href="http://memebox.com/futureblogger/show/668-a-fourth-turning-is-near"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fourth Turning</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> further strengthen the argument that we’re in the very early stages of a nasty, punctuated socio-economic transition.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, what can we do to preserve American jobs and our way of life?</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">First, we need to come to agreement on the root causes of the problem - a handful of which I have listed above. Since our political system is clearly incapable of achieving this level of dialogue, due to a phenomenon that Jonathan Rauch aptly labels “</span><a href="http://www.scottlondon.com/reviews/rauch.html"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Demosclerosis</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">” (thanks to </span><a href="http://accelerating.org/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ASF</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> President </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Smart_(futurist)"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">John Smart</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for the excellent reference), it’s now incumbent on us, as individuals and local community networks, to Level-Up our understanding of the big-picture socio-economic dynamics. Now that the shit is hitting the fan, the time is ripe for productive dialogue, which must replace polarized political rhetoric if we are to successfully adapt to the </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_change"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">accelerating change</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that is obviously transforming our world and digesting American jobs. At the very least, establishing a better sense of accel-aware context can help tell us what NOT to do, and what NOT to waste resources on.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Once we get on more-or-less the same page, we can then either 1) move on to meaningful policy debates and attempt to bend politicians to our will or 2) work around them. Because it’s so difficult to achieve mass consensus, it seems fairly obvious that we must start generating creative solutions locally, at the community level. Fortunately, the same technological change that’s contributing to American job losses is also sparking the emergence of a host of powerful new tools and economic models that grass roots change agents can take advantage of. If our goal is to save American jobs, then it’s our responsibility to identify, vet and selectively apply these emerging solutions.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">First and most obviously, we can turn to well-established, leading-edge American tech and web companies like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Intel, Cisco, IBM, Johnson Controls, Amazon, EBay for software, hardware and intelligent systems that can bring down personal and business costs and increase profit. Google Apps, Maps and embedded Search can help save money and form new businesses. IBM’s Smart Infrastructure can reduce municipal sewage and water costs. Amazon and EBay can serve as powerful distribution channels for small businesses and entrepreneurs. And so forth. These are all solutions we need to become more familiar with so that we and our local communities can effectively implement them.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then there’s also a new class of social web companies that are already playing a more direct role in generating income, savings and new behavior - especially at the local level. These include the likes of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Groupon, and Foursquare, just to name a few. These companies offer tremendous marketing and content value and can only exist now that we’ve built the layer of high-speed internet and rich web infrastructure necessary to support them. And, believe it or not, some are </span><a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/40454493/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">growing even more quickly</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> than the likes of Google. For example, tech blogger Kara Swisher </span><a href="http://kara.allthingsd.com/20101203/exclusive-groupon-annual-revenues-actually-2-billion/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">reports</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that “</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #171717; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Groupon’s run rate for this year is clocking in at $2 billion in revenue [offering] insight into why Google has been willing to pay up to $6 billion to acquire Groupon.”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">MIND-BOGGLING</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> figure, especially for a company that many scoffed at not too long ago and that initially set out to “</span><a href="http://chicagobreakingbusiness.com/2010/12/sources-groupon-rejects-googles-offer-will-stay-independent.html"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">organize collective action</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> around social or charitable causes”. Never before has a company reached $2 billion in annual revenue in just 2 years time. Never before has a company been offered $6 billion just 2 years into its existence (other than spin-off companies). </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Particularly interesting is the trendline of valuations. Going back just one decade we can see acceleration at work. Youtube was </span><a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15196982/ns/business-us_business/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">purchased by google for $1.65 billion</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> after just 18 months of existence. Farmville creator Zynga is said to be </span><a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/31168/Report_Zyngas_551B_Valuation_Higher_Than_RetailCentric_EA.php"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">worth $5.5 billion</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> just 3 years into its life. Secondary market shares of Facebook are reported to be </span><a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/31168/Report_Zyngas_551B_Valuation_Higher_Than_RetailCentric_EA.php"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">trading at a value of $50 billion</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> after 6 years. And now Groupon has claimed the crown of fastest growing company in the history of planet Earth. The speed at which a company can be organized and scale is clearly accelerating.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even more interesting is the symbiotic relationship these companies have with their customers. Each and every one of them fundamentally depends on user generated content and participation to function. Therefore, they inherently must make the cost of participation as low as possible, and the benefits to users as high as possible - a phenomenon I like to call </span><a href="http://memebox.com/futureblogger/show/1426-the-mandate-of-kevin"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Mandate of Kevin</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. This is their bread and butter. YouTube returns value in the form of attention and ad revenue. Zynga provides a web of social interaction and virtual gifts from co-players. Facebook returns value in the form of a rich, easy to navigate social graph, marketing opportunities and great technology (they’d lose users the second they fell behind in technology, as Friendster and MySpace did). And it’s no surprise that the fastest horse out of the gate, Groupon, returns the most value of them all to businesses and organizations in the form of direct revenue in exchange for participating in the group discount schemes. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s logical to predict that their successors will be more dependent on large groups of value-adding participants, aka </span><a href="http://techcrunch.com/2007/06/15/the-rise-of-the-prosumer/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">prosumers</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (producer + consumer = prosumer). Which means that the power will continue to swing in our direction, resulting in larger pay-outs and more direct value, while the sites themselves become even more user-friendly and integrated with other systems (like Facebook, Google, and Twitter) that we already use on a regular basis. Leading-edge companies like Google are </span><a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/being-bad-to-your-customers-is-bad-for.html"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">acutely aware</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of this.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Such prosumer-centric models will steadily trickle down to all sorts of industries and purpose networks. Some early examples include iphone apps that </span><a href="http://waze.com/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #571fa1; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">turn street mapping into a reward-driven game</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, online stock markets that </span><a href="http://hsx.com/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #571fa1; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">predict box office scores</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> more accurately than experts, and </span><a href="http://socialnode.blogspot.com/2010/05/rise-of-social-data-mining.html"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #571fa1; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">social health networks capable of determining the effectiveness of new drugs</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> years before clinical trials can accomplish the same thing.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Stepping back again, we can see that at the very heart of this transformation of opportunities is acceleration in the networking of human beings and the ability to put more brains and bodies to use more effectively in more ways - the social side of accelerating change. Key to this is the ongoing deployment of mobile computer devices, which currently manifest as the smartphones we carry around that allow us to connect to other people and data in real-time. These will continue to </span><a href="http://memebox.com/futureblogger/show/1187-the-iphone-of-2015-promises-flexible-screens-and-contact-lens-displays"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">augment the reality around us</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (if we want them to), bringing more of the </span><a href="http://www.memebox.com/futureblogger/show/915-nova-spivack-s-web-as-world-observation-leads-us-further-down-the-rabbit-hole"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">web into the world and linking more of the world to the web</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and enable more socio-economic opportunities that have been impossible up to this point in human history. Thanks in large part to some accelerating </span><a href="http://pcdb.santafe.edu/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">price-performance curves</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> like </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Moore’s Law</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, we are truly living through a momentous shift that’s going to proceed far more quickly than most of us presently imagine.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One result of this possibility expansion will be the ongoing emergence of a new class of Super-Prosumer companies that will fill much of the void left by dwindling American jobs. As the traditional economy flounders, these social web companies will clean-up (they already are) and expand the phase space for massive, rapid value creation like never before. It brings to mind the </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cambrain Explosion</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> 600 million years ago and the </span><a href="http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-11/29/large-mammals-evolved-after-dinosaurs"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">dinosaur-to-mammalian transition</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> 50-60 million years ago, both prime examples of a spurt of species destruction quickly followed by rapid new growth that can occur in systems when the conditions and timing are right. We are now living through a similar period in history.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To take advantage of the disruption and minimize the downside of accelerating change we must act like mammals at the end of the dinosaur era. We must learn to actively seek out and generate new opportunities, especially locally. As the barriers to participation and creation fall we can use new technologies to easily </span><a href="http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">create our own apps</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><a href="http://socialnode.blogspot.com/2009/06/using-declarative-technology-to-scale.html"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">build complex simulations</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><a href="http://www.xtranormal.com/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">create custom animations and cartoons</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><a href="http://www.itproportal.com/2010/12/4/google-releases-earth-engine-aid-scientists-satellite-imaging/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">better map and monitor the planet</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><a href="http://www.istockphoto.com/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">earn money for our photos and vids</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><a href="http://groundcrew.us/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">create powerful mobile on-the-fly action networks</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, earn money by </span><a href="http://www.groupon.com/learn"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">turning people on to deals</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, reduce emissions and </span><a href="http://www.getaround.com/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">earn money by renting out our cars</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and so forth. The list goes on and on.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My near-term hope is that the explosion of opportunities will create more jobs than it destroys while reducing resource consumption along the way. But now that the game is cracking open and more people all over the world can participate it seems far more likely that we will not be able to replace the American jobs that we are losing quickly enough to minimize the negative short-term economic effects. That’s just reality. We as a nation have over-extended, over-borrowed and over-diluted our currency, and at the same time fallen behind in education and technical acumen. All while the rest of the world has learned to do what we do better and cheaper. So, even as we do make the transition, it will be at a lower wage price point than we are accustomed to.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is however a silver lining to the tale. The United States is a creative nation that can benefit greatly from the entrepreneurial spirit woven into our national storyline and from the presence of the abundant prosumer-oriented companies that have already sprung to life here. If we can learn to more quickly learn from these examples and the potent new models that are emerging every single day, then we can and will recover our edge and relative income. If not, then we will see much value flow outward, off-shore and be left to hope that accelerating change will raise all boats even as others seize the opportunities that we could have seized.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By understanding the nature of accelerating change, globalization, automation, creative destruction at the national level, and emerging prosumer models we can figure out how to individually and collectively adapt to the times. As the world shifts, the individuals, communities, cultures and nations that upgrade their maps most quickly will have a big edge. People who understand the shift and the new tools will be able to do more with less and pull value toward them. They will be the ones to create and take advantage of the new Groupons and Facebooks. That said, the competition will be fierce, the price points will be lower, and the performance metrics more accurate. As a result we’ll need to become increasingly multi-modal, willing to work on-the-fly, become accustomed to low job security, and be willing to engage in an increaingly web-mediated economy. We'll need to become a nation of Super Prosumers.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If we can sufficiently level-up our map of the system and social web then we will surely learn to leverage our voices, feet, dollars and networks to increase personal and local opportunities in unexpected and astounding new ways, thus repositioning America for new jobs and growth.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Blog Reactions:</span><br />
<ul><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://wheretheresawilliam.blogspot.com/2010/12/future-is-coming.html"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">where there's a william</span></i></a></span></li>
<li><i><a href="http://blog.speculist.com/2010/12/the-jobless-boom.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Speculist</span></a></i></li>
</ul><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Alvis Brigis is a media strategist, writer, and entrepreneur focused on the social side of accelerating change. He is currently CEO of a stealth mobile content start-up, Board Member of the Acceleration Studies Foundation and a weekend bartender.</span></div><script type="text/javascript">
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</script>Alvis Brigishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16168303630787495118noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4958451729186538503.post-3190720057788111972010-08-27T14:18:00.000-07:002010-08-27T15:00:57.331-07:00Here Come the Blobs!<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Now that iPhones and Androids have catalyzed a vibrant ecosystem of services that allow you to check in to places like Starbucks, doesn’t it seem likely that a next logical step will be the ability to check in to people? Such a feature would be the social equivalent of gravity, incentivizing people to form and maintain proximity clusters or blobs. </span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOQTxrxH3_VQ6dR0v1ZS0g3NzE6-mo1bISqpV9Epwq8hbcLzMso9QZ4sBix0w1wLSUmPhpqoZ4FdVUr3ZPyeDTWwPi9HH4Dz0y69a7OllfEPfXytLQDXf1p4sjpGV1v5cERI01hb6cWs6Q/s1600/blobs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOQTxrxH3_VQ6dR0v1ZS0g3NzE6-mo1bISqpV9Epwq8hbcLzMso9QZ4sBix0w1wLSUmPhpqoZ4FdVUr3ZPyeDTWwPi9HH4Dz0y69a7OllfEPfXytLQDXf1p4sjpGV1v5cERI01hb6cWs6Q/s320/blobs.jpg" /></a></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I’ve already seen a version of this feature in the wild - in RL! Way back when I was a kid spending summers at Latvian Camp we’d often play a game called Blob, essentially group tag. Each iteration would start with one person designated as “it”. Their goal then was to capture additional people, each time adding them to the ever growing blob. The game would end with a large swarm of kids spreading out the blob in a line to trap the final speedy kid in a corner of the playing field. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Now imagine an app called Blob, loosley based on the same principles. The app would reward people for 1) checking in to other friends’ cell phones, 2) remaining in proximity, and 3) growing the blob. Thus clusters of people would earn points, just like Foursquare or Gowalla, for forming groups (much like atoms form molecules), maintaining density, and increasing the size of the blob. For many early adopters this behavior would be fun in and of itself. For normals it’d become more enjoyable as 1) the incentives increased, 2) other apps/games were developed for blob (the Party Version, the Gym Class version, the Flash Mob version), and 3) the functionality was mixed with other potent services like Groupon (imagine that you and your blob could get 10% off coffee for checking your group in at Starbucks). </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Like location check-ins, the concept is such a no-brainer next step that I’ve gotta believe companies like Facebook, Foursquare and Yelp are developing it or something similar right now. <a href="http://www.facebook.com/places/">Facebook Places</a> already allows people to check in their friends to locations (a logical first step for grouping) and mapping crowd-sourcer <a href="http://socialnode.blogspot.com/2010/08/waze-releases-groups-feature-social.html">Waze recently announced a groups feature</a> that allows people to caravan together on trips. The next obvious move is to establish game incentives for group formation, which will then enable a whole mess of emergent behavior, services, games and next-level complexity.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">My bet is that over the next 6 months we’ll see more than a few established geosocial players releasing grouping features or discrete apps. They may call it Social Gravity, or Molecule, or Grouply, or ClusterFu*k, or maybe even Social Node. But let it be known, the Latvian Camp kids would prefer they call it Blob.</span><br />
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</div><div style="color: #444444;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Image by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/masterslate/">Zach Armstrong</a>. </span><script type="text/javascript">
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</script></div>Alvis Brigishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16168303630787495118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4958451729186538503.post-36717617414341217562010-08-25T16:51:00.000-07:002012-04-10T04:00:49.937-07:00The Acceleration of Gaming<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span id="internal-source-marker_0.688989822643532" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Life must be lived as play. ~ Plato</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Fueled by provocative presentations/posts by gaming-oriented thinkers like </span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FSsztwbRW0"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Jesse Schell</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, </span><a href="http://www.scvngr.com/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">SCVNGR</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">’s Patrick </span><a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/seth_priebatsch_the_game_layer_on_top_of_the_world.html"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Seth Priebatsch</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and VC </span><a href="http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/23/the-end-of-moores-law-a-love-story/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Bing Gordon</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, the idea that games are spreading into serious areas like work, transportation, shopping and health is finally beginning to spread to the masses. Of course, like most ideas, this concept has been around for a very long time, taking on various forms. We can trace it back to iterations like Justin Hall’s </span><a href="http://passivelymultiplayer.com/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Passive Gaming</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, Zyda’s spin on </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serious_game"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Serious Games</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, Wolfram’s work on </span><a href="http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/articles/ca/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Cellular Automata</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, John Nash’s </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Game Theory</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, MIlton Bradley’s </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_game_of_life"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">The Game of Life</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> (1860 - later associated with cellular automata) and even statements made by Plato like the one above. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But games have been around even far longer than humans have been aware of them. Thinkers like Wolfram and Nash argue, convincingly, that games are baked into nature itself and originated perhaps billions of years ago, certainly when organisms appeared and began competing with one another for resources, and that people rely on games from moment-to-moment to process thoughts (neural nets), emotions and to inform their behavior. This big picture view is key as we now contemplate the ongoing spread of games. It helps us get at the deeper </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">why</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, rather than just the fascinating </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">how</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Schell does a great job of pointing out how games will interact with pervasive sensors and computers (aka </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_Things"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">The Internet of Things</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">), which lines up nicely with Gordon’s “video-game-ification of everything” principle and Priebatsch’s argument that 2010-2020 will be the decade of “the gaming layer”. Each of these frames is a very useful guides to the near-future. That said, to get the whole story it’s also critical to place these ideas into the context of life-as-game and and accelerating change.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">When I refer to accelerating change, I’m not simply talking about </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Moore’s Law</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> (the regular doubling rate of computer processors) and other hard-tech advances. I am referencing Kurweil’s </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_change"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Law of Accelerating Returns</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> which he links to information technologies and thinkers like </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korotayev"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Korotayev</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> argue is the product of the increased rate of networking of human brains (which totally jives with observations like </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Metcalfe’s Law</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed%27s_law"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Reed’s Law</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">). We as a people-populated planet are steadily, inexorably getting better at </span><a href="http://socialnode.blogspot.com/2009/01/total-systems-quantification-graphing.html"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">mapping systems</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and </span><a href="http://socialnode.blogspot.com/2009/06/simulation-era.html"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">simulating </span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">our environment thanks to the information networking enabled by rapidly emerging communication technologies. It appears to be a natural planetary development driven by convergence of human created technologies and data pools, and even more fundamentally, the nature of life itself.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Through competition (which also ends up expanding to cooperation - </span><a href="http://evodevouniverse.com/wiki/Main_Page"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Evo Devo</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">), life produces increasingly more complex structures </span><a href="http://socialnode.blogspot.com/2009/10/control-over-perceived-environment-cope.html"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">capable of controlling more resources</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. This game has brought us to to 2010 and a world in which games appear poised to saturate everything, just as as technology is poised to do the same. This parallel timing is not accidental. Better technology leads to better games. Better games (aka behavior templates and/or guides) lead to better technology. The two are intertwined and it can and should be argued that game patterns themselves are a form of technology. So I am now arguing that </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">games are absolutely critical to the planetary phenomenon that futurists have come to call convergent accelerating change.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">If this is the case, then we can venture the prediction that games will proliferate in direct relationship to other accelerating vectors like computer processing, information, communication and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">perhaps</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> even </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">human intelligence</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. There are already countless examples of games being used to generate better products (this can be applied to computer processors), assemble knowledge (crowd-sourcing), facilitate communication & interaction, assist with learning. It makes a whole world of sense to me that games will be absolutely essential if general acceleration is to continue.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In particular, I find it interesting to contemplate the interaction between games and virtual models of the world and other systems of interest. Back in 2006 I contributed to a prescient cross-industry foresight project called the </span><a href="http://www.metaverseroadmap.org/overview/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Metaverse Roadmap</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> that identified convergence across Virtual Worlds, Mirror Worlds, Augmented Reality and Life-Logging (life logging has since been reconceptualized as Rich Video). The project slug read: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">What happens when video games meet Web 2.0? ... What happens is the Metaverse.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> This concept applies now, in a big way, and offers great insight into the near and long-term future of gaming. As we construct virtual infrastructure like </span><a href="http://googleearth.com/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Google Earth</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, </span><a href="http://facebook.com/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Facebook</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, </span><a href="http://youtube.com/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">YouTube</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and </span><a href="http://layar.com/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Augmented Reality</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, we’re ultimately building what IBM researcher Jim Spohrer has dubbed the</span><a href="http://www.worldboard.org/pub/spohrer/wbconcept/default.html"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">World Board</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> (what Baudrillard would equate with </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Hyper-Reality</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">), a cohesive system that allows people to access data about anything and everything in the world around us. Like the World Wide Web, the World Board seems to be a developmental inevitability. And it sure looks like gaming is essential if we’re to build this quickly, as the macro trends I listed above suggest must occur.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">So then, if games are in fact part and parcel of accelerating change, as I believe must be the case, then we can use that knowledge to formulate new predictions and hypotheses about the future of games and the future in general. For example, we can argue that the gaming industry will grow massively through 2020. Or that serious games like <a href="http://waze.com/">Waze</a> will explode in popularity. Or that web-based gaming will become essential to managing typically conservative domains like government, business and education. Or that game theory and studies will be required learning circa 2015. Or that games will be essential to the increase of human capability and intelligence. Or that games are likely to plummet in price while increasing in performance and experience rapid commodification. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Summarized, the general point I am making is that games have always been critical to the evolution and development of living systems, that they are key to our economy and behavior, and that we can expect them to evolve and spread rapidly as we proceed through the knee of some powerful curves that affect everything we know and have come to hold dear. If acceleration is to continue, games too must accelerate - and we can use that realization to help inform our models and predictions of the world.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Fortunately we have a great deal of experience in this area. As Plato reminds us, we are and have always been compulsive gamers.</span></div>Alvis Brigishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16168303630787495118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4958451729186538503.post-17667655313061776232010-08-19T12:52:00.000-07:002012-04-10T03:42:41.970-07:00An app for every tree in Central Park by 2015?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Sometimes I like to think of humans carrying smartphones as </span><a href="http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Viper_probe_droid"><span style="color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Imperial Probe Droids</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;"> capable of </span><a href="http://socialnode.blogspot.com/2009/01/total-systems-quantification-graphing.html"><span style="color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">quantifying</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;"> the world around us. After all, millions of </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosumer"><span style="color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">prosumers</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;"> use these devices to snap photos, record audio, shoot video, map the position of things and even record our paths. Smartphones can and do double as truly capable reconnaissance tools.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Much of the information collected through smartphones is then made available on the internet where it can be pulled into a variety of very useful graphs, web pages and applications. There is tremendous business, consumer, and social demand in place to incentivize these flows. This pull force is getting stronger as we collectively discover new ways to unlock the value of this data.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A powerful example of this effect is Google Earth. Since its birth as Keyhole (2001), Google acquisition (2004) and ongoing evolution, Google Earth has steadily added content and increased its resolution. One can now view weather, traffic and demographic data and even 3d representations of landmarks, trees and </span><a href="http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">buildings</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> (the company I manage, </span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/in3dmedia"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">in3d.com</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, specializes in constructing these) using this contextual 3d map</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It is also possible to add information to the objects embedded on Google Earth in the form of custom </span><a href="http://earth.google.com/support/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=guide.cs&guide=22370"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">layers</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, </span><a href="http://www.google.com/local/add/analyticsSplashPage?hl=en-US&gl=US"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Google Places</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> pages, or links to websites or custom location/thing apps. Fueled by Google, a growing number of geosocial startups, businesses looking to differentiate their locations and a growing population of Google Earth enthusiasts, the number of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">3d objects paired with rich data</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> is exploding, resulting something that closely resembles Jim Spohrer's augmented reality <a href="http://www.worldboard.org/pub/spohrer/wbconcept/default.html">World Board</a>, the </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_Things"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">internet of things</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> (a scenario that originally envisioned cheap networked sensors scattered all over the place), or even a virtual version of Bruce Sterling’s </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spime"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">spime</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> concept.<span style="color: #444444;"> (If you're not familiar with these concepts then they're definitely worth a read.)</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">So the year is 2010, all of the above is possible, the number of smartphones is rapidly rising, and there’s tremendous demand in place to map and link the world. The next step to proper evaluation of the Central Park scenario now requires consensus on what constitutes an app.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Although most folks probably define apps as programs that run on smartphones, the definition is in fact a bit broader:</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Wikipedia: A </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">web application</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> is an</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_software"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">application</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> that is accessed over a network such as the</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Internet</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> or an</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intranet"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">intranet</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. The term may also mean a computer software application that is hosted in a browser-controlled environment (e.g. a</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_applet"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Java applet</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">)[</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">citation needed</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">] or coded in a browser-supported language (such as</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">JavaScript</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, combined with a browser-rendered</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markup_language"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">markup language</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> like</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">HTML</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">) and reliant on a common web browser to render the application</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executable"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">executable</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></blockquote>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The cost of generating an app generally ranges from free (simple </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widget"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">widgets</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, </span><a href="http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Yahoo pipes</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">) to tens of thousands of dollars fro full-fledged iPhone or Android apps. But, in general, these figures are dropping as more developers come online, HTML5 enables the insertion of basic apps into web pages, and big companies </span><a href="http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">make it easier for non-technical</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> people to create useful apps. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">With over </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_Market"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">100,000 Android apps</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App_Store"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">225,000 iPhone apps</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and countless other smartphone-viewable pages that also function as apps, it’s obvious that by 2015 there will be many millions of apps, some useful, many not useful. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The question at hand is whether or not each and every tree in NYC’s Central Park (there are </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">upwards of 25,000</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">) will have its own app, or website that contains apps, that can be easily accessed in the year 2015. Here are some of the trends that critically support this scenario:</span><br />
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<li style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Rise of the Prosumer: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">With increasingly more and less expensive means to produce content (higher resolution picture and video quality on smartphones by 2015 + new devices such as panoramic lenses or auto-object tagging AI) and a web marketplace for this content, it’s a safe bet to believe there will be many millions more people playing the prosumer game circa 2015. Especially significant will be the growing number of Super Quantifiers (the 3d equivalent of hardcore Wikipedia contributors, few but powerful!) looking to map everything around them for reputation, $ or other social currency.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Crowd-Sourced Photosynthing:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Google, Microsoft and a handful of other companies are in an escalating war to most quickly map the world (no surprise as this is absolutely critical to the future of search). This battle has spread from basic maps, to Street View, and finally to 3d. 3d components are generated by stitching together satellite, aerial, and ground-level photographs. This process is now taking a big leap forward as new rapid </span><a href="http://photosynth.net/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">photosynthing</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> processes are developed. Photosynthing is currently less effective than building 3d models of buildings and trees from carefully taken photographs, but in the next few years we expect it to overtake standard 3d model generation in efficiency. When that happens, circa 2013/2014, it will be possible to grab public geo-tagged photographs of a given space and to automagically create fine 3d models of everything in that space. With millions of people taking photographs of central park from various angles, it’s reasonable to believe that there will be sufficient data available to crowd-source a high resolution 3d map of all the trees in Central Park in the year 2015. Throw into the mix better location positioning, higher-rez aerial photography and perhaps cash incentives for photo-snapping consumers (Google, Microsoft or 3d Party </span><a href="http://www.memebox.com/futureblogger/show/1645-will-the-next-google-be-a-prosumer-based-quantification-company-"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Quantification Company</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">) and it becomes even more likely that a 3d Central Park model is likely to exist by 2015.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Google Things? </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">To grow its advertising base, Google will continue to steadily add value to its Google Places and drive adoption. It’s reasonable to believe that by 2015 every single Google Places page will either 1) be made available as an app in and of itself, or 2) contain one or many custom apps (thanks to HTML5 or a succeeding web language). I find it likely that Places will be expanded to include Things or Objects. Google is, after all, in the business of organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful. ... If Google doesn’t do this, Microsoft, Facebook or some </span><a href="http://www.widetag.com/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">new start-up</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> likely will. But doesn't Google Things make sense as the next iteration of Google Goggles?</span></li>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">With a 3d model of every tree available on Google Earth and the ability to easily add a Places or Things page associated with any geospatially located object, the next logical question then is whether or not it makes sense for Google to generate a custom Places page for each tree in Central Park. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Why would a company like Google or Microsoft do such a thing? Would people demand it? </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Here are a few reason why I think this is likely: </span><br />
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<li style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Benefits of Simulation:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Simulations help people to monitor and manage places. Many groups including the City of New York, park managment, citizen groups looking to preserve Central Park, tourism agencies and educational institutions will see the benefits of a simulated, true-to-scale, true-to-object Central Park - local World Board.</span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></span></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Search Wars: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The demand for increasingly better Search will drive Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, etc, into every niche that is not defended. Wherever there is information, they'll be there.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Key Gaming Catalyst: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">3d simulations can serve as the robust scaffolding for new applications and games. It’s developer heaven. If these simulations enable lots of new fun games then there will be a large class of people that demand to play them and thus demand the mapping of each and every tree in Central Park. Imagine Grand Theft Auto with a closer-to-exact map of NYC? </span></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Super Quantifiers:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> With technology dropping in price, Super Quantifiers will probably quantify the areas around them regardless of wht the rest of society thinks, unless their behavior can be restricted by legislation first. There are compulsive mappers out there.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></li>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But then again, all things future are uncertain, and it’s possible that the 3d Quantification of Central Park will not progress as quickly as I imagine. Some reasons for this may include:</span><br />
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<li style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Social Quantification Backlash:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> At some point the world will realize that rapid, rampant quantification may not be in its interests. Privacy, security, or plain lifestyle concerns could stop the other trends in their tracks. Events leading up to 2015 could turn people against graph stewards like Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Revenue Control: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The whole process could be slowed if NYC determines that it wants to control the revenue derived from simulations of Central Park. This could lead to slow negotiations with Google or Microsoft, or strict regulations that slow the process.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Technology:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> If the world enters a harsh depression, then it’s conceivable that technological progress will slow by 2015. That said, the necessary building blocks for tree mapping and apping are already in place. They don’t have to progress all that much for this to remain a viable scenario.</span></li>
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<span id="internal-source-marker_0.4776413578954346" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>Conclusion: </b>So long as there's no social will to regulate against deep quantification of our surroundings, it's highly likely that by 2015 we'll have created 3d versions of all the trees in Central Park via Crowd-Sourced Photosynthing. It then becomes an almost trivial matter to pair each object of interest contained in these simulations with its own web app or equivalent.</span><br />
<br />
<span id="internal-source-marker_0.4776413578954346" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The implications of such a scenario are profound.</span><span id="internal-source-marker_0.4776413578954346" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span id="internal-source-marker_0.4776413578954346" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It's a confirmation of the idea that<a href="http://memebox.com/futureblogger/show/1591-total-systems-quantification-toward-the-everything-graph-"> the rate and resolution of our world-modeling behavior is increasing in direct proportion to advancing computing, sensing and social media technologies</a>. As we capture more data and get better at patching it together into cohesive simulations tools like Google Earth will grow more valuable (and dangerous). </span><span id="internal-source-marker_0.4776413578954346" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">They will then serve as platforms for social commenting, interaction, commerce and gaming. But along the way the value chain will probably transform and new social behaviors will emerge. </span><br />
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<span id="internal-source-marker_0.4776413578954346" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Over the next 5 years the web will rapidly spread into the world. This will not necessarily require the abundant, cheap sensors typically re</span><span id="internal-source-marker_0.4776413578954346" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">ferenced in conversations about The Internet of Things (which is more about direct object-to-object communication). Instead, it's more likely that prosumers will enrich rich virtual mirror worlds and then access them via geo-coordinates at home or on the go. </span><br />
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<span id="internal-source-marker_0.4776413578954346" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Here comes Sphorer's World Board, sprouting first in densely populated public areas, like Central Park.</span><span id="internal-source-marker_0.4776413578954346" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
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P.S. I'm not arguing that all of the tree apps in Central Park circa 2015 will necessarily be used very often, just that the means will be there to establish such systems at uber-low cost. It'll be fascinating to watch use cases emerge. There will be many we cannot anticipate. </span><i style="color: #999999;"><span id="internal-source-marker_0.4776413578954346" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></i><br />
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<i style="color: #999999;"><span id="internal-source-marker_0.4776413578954346" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Thanks to </span><span id="internal-source-marker_0.4776413578954346" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></i><a href="http://www.emergentbydesign.com/" style="color: #999999;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Venessa Miemis</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> for the conversation that inspired me to write this post and to </span><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:TakuyaMurata" style="color: #999999;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">TakuyaMurata</span></a><span style="color: #999999;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">for the iPhone user photo - Creative Commons Share Alike 2.0.</span><br />
<span id="internal-source-marker_0.4776413578954346" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span id="internal-source-marker_0.4776413578954346" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
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All in all, this appears to be a smart strategic move by company looking to up its influx of user generated content while at the same time grabbing a bigger chunk of the LBS market. Expect to see more and more advanced geo-grouping features from companies like Foursquare, Gowalla, MyTown, Loopt, Yelp, etc, in the near future. Most probably have grouping features in the works. But those who don't will probably scramble to react once they realize this maneuver could threaten their core.<br />
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It's fun to watch the fast pace of the geosocial mobile apps! My bet is that it'll accelerate as more entrants jump into this hot new space.Alvis Brigishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16168303630787495118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4958451729186538503.post-5253556709202376852010-05-11T14:07:00.000-07:002011-11-12T20:00:23.327-08:00Prosumer-Centric Capitalism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">Irving Wladawsky-Berger has posted an illuminating piece titled <a href="http://bit.ly/b9vGAm">Customer-centric Capitalism</a> in which he convincingly argues the now dominant profit-driven businesses M.O. is in fact detrimental to society:</span></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">For the last thirty years, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_value">maximizing shareholder value</a></i> has replaced <i>customer value</i> as the key objective of many companies. But, <a href="http://blog.irvingwb.com/blog/2009/03/capitalism-beyond-the-crisis.html">a number of experts</a> are now raising questions about this widespread business practice and the extreme preoccupation with short term profits that inevitably results from putting shareholders over customers. </span></i></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">It is clear that our system of profit-driven capitalism must be modernized with a greater emphasis placed on the customer. This is already happening. A handful of companies, like Google, have adopted positive-sum or triple-bottom-line business models. Many more are using data more effectively to improve customer service wherever it impacts profit. Customer-centric capitalism is making a slow but steady comeback.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><a href="http://blog.irvingwb.com/blog/2010/05/customercentric-capitalism.html"></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">Now consider the spread of modern day analytics.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">Thanks to the web information explosion and the social sharing boom it's become possible to track more complex behavior. Among other things, we're compulsively piecing together this data into a more accurate picture of knowledge creation, sharing and value, and can now determine which members of a given network are more valuable than others.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">So rather than advocating and rallying behind customer-centric capitalism as the next logical developmental economic step, perhaps we should expand or shift the concept to include this now visible network behavior. We could call this "prosumer-centric capitalism". </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><b>What's a Prosumer?: </b> A prosumer is defined as a hybrid of a consumer and a producer. Generally speaking, the vast majority of humans are not pure consumers, but rather prosumers that contribute more or less value to the companies and social systems they interact with.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">You think Google is free? Nope. Google relies on all of the search queries we type in and then react to to generate its core value. Same goes for Facebook, Yahoo, Aol, and other social media companies. These companies all depend on prosumers for their bread and butter.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">Other interesting prosumer-centric business models include iphone apps that <a href="http://waze.com/">turn street mapping into a reward-driven game</a>, online stock markets that <a href="http://hsx.com/">predict box office scores</a> more accurately than experts, and <a href="http://socialnode.blogspot.com/2010/05/rise-of-social-data-mining.html">social health networks capable of determining the effectiveness of new drugs</a> years before clinical trials can accomplish the same thing. The list goes on and on, largely due to the spread of modern social media.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">It's not much of a stretch to imagine that these companies, and other traditional companies that undergo requisite webification, will be financially incentivized to <a href="http://memebox.com/futureblogger/show/1426-the-mandate-of-kevin">return increasingly more value to their prosumers</a>. Those that can more effectively pinpoint, reward and tweak the conditions for value creation will have a distinct advantage. At the same time, keep in mind that the prosumers too will gain access to this data. With quantitative data to point to, the tension between the prosumers and funders should create a healthy market for very specific micro behavior that could not have existed at any previous point in history (well, at least not without enormous expense).</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><b>Prosumer-Centric Capitalism:</b> There is a gradient between consumer and producer called the prosumer. As emerging systems get better at quantifying prosumer behavior, we will be required to adjust our consumer- and customer-oriented economic models and Excel spreadsheets (or Google Spreadsheets) accordingly. Many companies are already doing this. Defining customers as prosumers that add value in specific ways can help upgrade and bring more clarity to our understanding of our info-economic system and lead to more fair, balanced and/or efficient economic development. When robust and foolproof prosumer accounting spreads to the masses we'll get Prosumer-Centric Capitalism, baby. </span></div>
</div>Alvis Brigishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16168303630787495118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4958451729186538503.post-37847803373856453182010-05-11T12:19:00.000-07:002010-05-11T12:57:02.570-07:00The Rise of Social Data Mining (as a Business Model)<i>Companies are discovering how to monetize social network data. This is driving Big Open Science. Is that a good thing? </i><br />
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A social network for sharing illness data, <a href="http://patientslikeme.com/">patientslikeme.com</a>, has <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/25276/?ref=rss&a=f">demonstrated</a> that it can tap the information in its user network to predict the outcome of clinical drug trials. The service, which is populated by a large number of <a href="http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.google.com/health/ref/Amyotrophic%2Blateral%2Bsclerosis&ei=lnXkS-_jO4P6lwfa-fG8Ag&sa=X&oi=prbx_health_onebox&resnum=1&ct=title&cad=015969070236012799617&ved=0CCUQ4wEwAA&usg=AFQjCNEA4mFliOvuqgG0gts0JVKSK8AOMw">ALS</a> sufferers, determined that lithium use had no effect on the late-stage decline in ALS patients. Why is this significant? Because it took 18 months before a formal study was able to confirm exactly the same thing.<br />
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While clearly not <i>yet</i> a replacement for the clinical trial process, the findings do reinforce the concept of Big Open Science - the use of large data sets to conduct a rougher, more rapid form of science.<br />
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The <a href="http://www.patientslikeme.com/help/faq/Corporate#m_money">financial model</a> is clever and solid:<br />
<blockquote><i>We take the information patients share about their experience with the disease, and sell it in a de-identified, aggregated and individual format to our partners (i.e., companies that are developing or selling products to patients). These products may include drugs, devices, equipment, insurance, and medical services. We do not rent, sell or share personally identifiable information for marketing purposes or without explicit consent. Because we believe in transparency, we tell our members exactly what we do and do not do with their data. </i></blockquote>So long as the data remains totally secure, it sure reads like a win-win to me. I can see many quantified health start-ups adopting or moving towards this model.<br />
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But, aside from the health data, it's not really all that new.<br />
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Focus groups and stock markets have been around for hundreds of years. More recently, <a href="http://hsx.com/">Hollywood Stock Exchange</a> (HSX), a movie performance predictor site oft cited by collective intelligence researchers, has clearly demonstrated its ability to forecast box office revenues via crowdsourcing. And, of course, don't forget the banks, credit card companies and info aggregators that can already "predict with 95% certainty that you will get a divorce, two years before it happens, based on your purchases", as Google's <a href="http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10129">Marissa Mayer famously pointed out</a> on Charlie Rose.<br />
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In the coming years we can expect this sort of model to proliferate. Trends like cheaper data storage, smaller sensing devices, widening bandwidth, exponentially faster computing and emergent social behavior suggest that more companies will be able to mine more valuable data from more willing participants and sell it to more interested parties. Barring an all-out privacy backlash, it's a relatively safe bet that the broader market will create the conditions necessary for more similar social data mining startups and operations.<br />
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The new opportunities are seemingly endless:<br />
<ul><li><b>health & medicine sites</b> - like patientslikeme or <a href="http://www.curetogether.com/">curetogether</a> (shout out to Alexandra Carmichael)</li>
<li><b>location video</b> - streaming and stored on youtube</li>
<li><b>driving information</b>- gathered through your car</li>
<li><b>smartphone apps</b> - more complex data capture, <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?ch=specialsections&sc=emerging08&id=20247">reality mining</a></li>
<li><b>genome </b>- companies like <a href="http://23andme.com/">23andme </a></li>
<li><b>etcetera!</b></li>
</ul>At the same time, consider how certain large companies can leverage Big Open Science (they're already doing it for market research, but could easily broaden these efforts):<br />
<ul><li><b>Search:</b> Google, Bing, Yahoo Search</li>
<li><b>Social:</b> Facebook, MySpace, Twitter</li>
<li><b>Gaming:</b> Sony, XBox, Nintendo, Apple</li>
<li><b>Smartphones:</b> Apple, Microsoft, HTC</li>
</ul>Privacy concerns aside (for the moment), there's such an abundance of untapped informational value that it's easy to envision a world in which total productivity grows by leaps and bounds - as a square to acceleration in the technology, data and comm space - a sentiment echoed by Wired writer and <a href="http://www.quantifiedself.com/">Quantified Self</a> blogger Gary Wolf at a recent Stanford MediaX seminar. (When I asked him whether or not he believed that Quantification was directly related to Kurzweil's <a href="http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1">Law of Accelerating Returns</a> he thought about it for a moment then said "yes".)<br />
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Now, will these quantification driven economic gains gains trickle down to the average person? Yes, I do think they will. First in the form of accelerated science. Then, second, it seems likely that the increasingly abundant services and social networks in the space will be forced by the market to return more and more value to the users, or prosumers, that are contributing this data - an effect that I have playfully nicknamed <a href="http://memebox.com/futureblogger/show/1426-the-mandate-of-kevin">The Mandate of Kevin</a>.<br />
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But will these gains come online fast enough to offset the disruptive forces of globalization, production automation, a large-scale privacy backlash or the resulting social turmoil? That's hard to say, because we humans have never experienced such convergence before. However, it is becoming more and more clear that traditional economics will drive Big Open Science and that this behavior is a thread interwoven with other accelerators. Hopefully that will turn out to be a good thing.Alvis Brigishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16168303630787495118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4958451729186538503.post-15096042219557648212010-05-10T12:44:00.000-07:002010-05-10T13:03:25.620-07:00Which Big Company Will Launch the Private Facebook Alternative?Loren Feldman at <a href="http://www.1938media.com/">1938media</a> makes the case for a large-scale Facebook alternative that caters to users looking for PRIVACY. He suggests that Aol is best positioned to go that route. <br />
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</script>Sounds pretty developmentally inevitable to me. There will be open social networks and closed social networks. The open play makes sense for Facebook at this time, but I expect that at least one large-scale CLOSED social network and many more gated niche players will soon emerge. Google, Microsoft, Apple, Aol, IBM, Yahoo or even MySpace are companies that could make big gains by branding themselves as stewards of your privacy.<br />
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</script>Alvis Brigishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16168303630787495118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4958451729186538503.post-7424705986187267552010-05-10T12:04:00.000-07:002010-05-11T14:37:57.728-07:00The Gradual TranshumanAccording to <a class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanist" title="Transhumanist">transhumanist</a> thinkers, a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posthuman">posthuman</a> is a hypothetical future being "whose basic capacities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be no longer unambiguously <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human" title="Human">human</a> by our current standards." <br />
<br />
Futurist Jamais Cascio <a href="http://io9.com/5533833/your-posthumanism-is-boring-me">tells io9</a> he thinks this word is "a term with more weight than meaning".<br />
<blockquote><i>Posthumanity ... will always be just over the horizon. Always in The Future. When the systems and augmentations we now consider to be posthuman hit the real world, they will have become simply human in scale.</i><br />
<br />
<i> That's because augmentation - the development of systems and technologies to allow us to do and to be more than what our natural biology would allow - is intrinsic to what it means to be human.</i><script type="text/javascript">
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</script>Jamais points out in the article and in this NYC Future Salon <a href="http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/cascio20091106/">video</a> that the human species has already greatly augmented itself with technology (this includes words and complex abstractions, like science and math), so it's hard to pin down a static definition of "human" when we're actually evolving dynamically.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikyZkrYbyVUVP56xhVINbyByDiFg4zZCAfJOWiH_Wz6A9vxcgO790dyyfli43pNIhUGyDDlfhavhoNf99PSX-3xzZu_TW7UTP55Cae0yu_GC9YtlPN32Ck-s07tZZQtmxGhoVtTB7s3IDL/s1600/jamais_with_dog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="361" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikyZkrYbyVUVP56xhVINbyByDiFg4zZCAfJOWiH_Wz6A9vxcgO790dyyfli43pNIhUGyDDlfhavhoNf99PSX-3xzZu_TW7UTP55Cae0yu_GC9YtlPN32Ck-s07tZZQtmxGhoVtTB7s3IDL/s400/jamais_with_dog.jpg" width="400" /></a>I agree and salute you, Jamais. <br />
<br />
Our genes have changed to better take advantage of linguistics, numbers, and tools. The cloud is an extension of our thought processes. We're already significantly "post" and "trans" to what we were 100,000, 10,000, 1,000, and 100 years ago.<br />
<br />
Yes, technology, information and perhaps even intelligence are growing at an accelerating rate, but the prospect of accelerating near-term change, even a digitization scenario, does not erase that which has already occurred.<br />
<br />
So let's achieve consensus on the term <a href="http://memebox.com/futureblogger/show/470-transhumanism-vs-trans-systemism">"human"</a> to inform our concept of that which is not human, or more than human. (This should also help clarify things in regard to that pesky "Singularity" term, another concept house built on <a href="http://memebox.com/futureblogger/show/599-the-singularity-frankenstein">shaky definitional foundations</a>.)<br />
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The similarities between Mark Zuckerberg and Genghis Khan are uncanny:<br />
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<ol><li>Genghis Khan was born in the Mongolian plains in 1162 - not far from the current capital <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulan_Bator" title="Ulan Bator">Ulaanbaatar</a>. Mark Zuckerberg was born in White Plains in 1984 - not far from world media capital New York City. </li>
<li>Genghis Khan became leader of his tribe at the age of 12 and began plotting world domination. Mark Zuckerberg became leader of his middle school Coders Club at the age of 12 and began planning world domination. </li>
<li>Genghis Khan committed a questionable act by killing his half-brother, <a class="new" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bekhter&action=edit&redlink=1" title="Bekhter (page does not exist)">Bekhter</a>, during a fight which resulted from a dispute over hunting spoils. This incident cemented his position as head of the household. Mark Zuckerberg committed a questionable act of killing Facebook predecessor ConnectU by mimicking its features and took all the spoils. This incident cemented Facebook as the leading social network at Harvard. </li>
<li>Genghis Khan used his cunning to unite the warring <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naimans" title="Naimans">Naimans</a>, <a class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkit" title="Merkit">Merkits</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_people" title="Uyghur people">Uyghurs</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatars" title="Tatars">Tatars</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongols" title="Mongols">Mongols</a>, and <a class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keraits" title="Keraits">Keraits</a>. Mark Zuckerberg used his cunning to unite college kids, parents, businesses across national borders, many of whom had been experiencing culture wars.</li>
<li>Employing ruthless tactics, Genghis Khan conquered a vast geographic empire that stretched from Asia to Africa. Employing ruthless tactics, Mark Zuckerberg conquered a vast prosumer empire that includes millions of Asians and Africans.<br />
</li>
<li>Genghis Khan was tolerant of the varying religious views of the people he ruled. Mark Zuckerberg is tolerant of the varying religious views of people that follow Facebook's rules.<br />
</li>
<li>Genghis Khan decreed the adoption of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_alphabet" title="Uyghur
alphabet">Uyghur</a> script as the Mongol Empire's writing system. Mark Zuckerberg decreed the adoption of Facebook Connect and then Open Graph as the web's sharing system. </li>
<li>The Mongol Empire was governed by a civilian code, called the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yassa" title="Yassa">Yassa</a>, created by Genghis Khan. The Facebook Empire is governed by a civilian code called Facebook's Terms of Service, written by Mark Zuckerberg. </li>
<li>In Iraq and Iran, Genghis Khan is almost universally viewed as a destructive and genocidal warlord who caused enormous damage to the population of these areas. In Iraq and Iran, Mark Zuckerberg is viewed as a destructive and genocidal proponent of secularism and transparency who caused many awkward family dinner parties in these areas.</li>
<li>Despite his personality flaws (extreme violence and ego), Genghis Khan was VERY popular with the ladies of the 1100's. Despite his personality flaws (extreme nerdiness and ego), Mark Zuckerberg is VERY popular with the ladies of the 2000's. - Some things just never change.</li>
</ol>Mark Zuckerberg should take a DNA test because all of the evidence points to him being a direct descendant of Genghis Khan, the world conqueror. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6fxP13B7z5MV3gCJIIoqfaEGqkEqLYJlef2wdFHk1ONb8bUfpr1Mgb1xkHDvfYlWL76-Ac0H7VFH6V-ywc1z6DgKDt7-69n9WbJlm4OSZepJe3PMyXDYkA4L8iG__ocqatQU5jmJRosWD/s1600/zuck+genghis+side+by+side+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6fxP13B7z5MV3gCJIIoqfaEGqkEqLYJlef2wdFHk1ONb8bUfpr1Mgb1xkHDvfYlWL76-Ac0H7VFH6V-ywc1z6DgKDt7-69n9WbJlm4OSZepJe3PMyXDYkA4L8iG__ocqatQU5jmJRosWD/s640/zuck+genghis+side+by+side+2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />
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The first "quantitative study on the entire Twittersphere and information diffusion on it" conducted by the Department of Computer Science at KAIST University in Korea confirms that Twitter functions more as a broadcast news arena and less as a discrete social network. <br />
<br />
<center><img border="0" height="0" src="http://counters.gigya.com/wildfire/IMP/CXNID=2000002.11NXC/bT*xJmx*PTEyNzMxNjc*NjQ4MDYmcHQ9MTI3MzE2NzQ3NDI1OCZwPTEwMTkxJmQ9c3NfZW1iZWQmZz*yJm9mPTA=.gif" style="height: 0px; visibility: hidden; width: 0px;" width="0" /><br />
<div id="__ss_3922095" style="width: 425px;"><b style="display: block; margin: 12px 0pt 4px;"><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/haewoon/what-is-twitter-a-social-network-or-a-news-media-3922095" title="What is Twitter, a Social Network or a News Media? ">What is Twitter, a Social Network or a News Media? </a></b><object height="355" id="__sse3922095" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=2010-4-www-100430134910-phpapp01&stripped_title=what-is-twitter-a-social-network-or-a-news-media-3922095" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/><embed name="__sse3922095" src="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=2010-4-www-100430134910-phpapp01&stripped_title=what-is-twitter-a-social-network-or-a-news-media-3922095" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="355"></embed></object><br />
<div style="padding: 5px 0pt 12px;"><br />
</div></div></center><br />
One particularly<a href="http://an.kaist.ac.kr/traces/WWW2010.html"> interesting nugget</a> is the estimation that "any retweeted tweet is to reach an average of 1,000 users no matter what the number of followers is of the original tweet. Once retweeted, a tweet gets retweeted almost instantly on next hops, signifying fast diffusion of information after the 1st retweet. " This seems to reinforce that Twitter network behavior is more about the content and less about the people.<br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
<center><object height="385" width="640"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Tmf0ugQrDFk&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b&hd=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Tmf0ugQrDFk&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b&hd=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object></center><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2010/05/ibm-debuting-cityone-for-city-planning-trainers.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2Fcvsherman%2Fnews+%28Virtual+Worlds+News%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher">CityOne is already in use at over 1,000 universities for free as part of IBM's academic initiatives</a> and makes sense as a branding and awareness play to support the company's Smart Planet and Smart Town initiatives.<br />
<br />
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<br />
<blockquote><i>Gates: People often present two timeframes that we should have as goals for CO2 reduction -- 30% (off of some baseline) by 2025 and 80% by 2050. I believe the key one to achieve is 80% by 2050. <br />
</i><br />
</blockquote>Gates' logic is consistent with a recurring dialogue I've encountered in technology and forecasting circles: why waste time with incremental advances when we should be innovating technologies an order of magnitude more powerful than the previous generation.<br />
<br />
But as we enter the knee of some potent accelerating curves (technology, information, communication), it's become painfully obvious that the majority of national systems aren't offering their populations the right innovation incentives, despite the financial near-crisis we've just experienced. For example, President Obama's stated goal of 3% GDP dedicated to innovation, relegated to the back seat as other issues occupy the attention of federal lawmakers more in tune with the election cycle than the larger national heartbeat and nervous system, remains a pipe dream.<br />
<br />
So how will we catalyze the systemic will to innovate in leaps and bounds rather than incrementally? Two possible answers come to mind. <br />
<br />
A) CREATIVE DESTRUCTION: Generational theorists Strauss and Howe argue that it will require cyclical creative destruction, a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss_and_Howe">Fourth Turning</a>. <br />
<br />
B) CONVERGENT ACCELERATION: Acceleration theorists argue that convergence in technological, communication and information systems (among others) will usher in a new era of innovation fluiditiy that permits us to better research, quantify and solve problems. The idea here is that the free market will permit the best innovations to emerge and evolve more quickly than before thanks to the fluidity enabled by the web.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, our ostensibly free market system is so riddled with holes that leak human generated capital that innovation has become massively underfunded.<br />
<br />
Gates points out that "to make the 80% goal by 2050 we are going to have to reduce emissions from transportation and electrical production in participating countries down to zero". The current U.S. system is incapable of meeting this goal. For this to happen, nations like ours will need to develop better cognizance of innovation and re-innovate our decision-making system accordingly. <br />
<br />
<blockquote><i>Gates: If CO2 reduction is important, we need to make it clear to people what really matters -- getting to zero. ... With that kind of clarity, people will understand the need to get to zero and begin to grasp the scope and scale of innovation that is needed. ... However all the talk about renewable portfolios, efficiency, and cap and trade tends to obscure the specific things that need to be done.</i><br />
</blockquote><br />
To solve such problems we need to reinvent our collective approach to innovation. Many bright entrepreneurs, scholars and policy thinkers are compelled to tackle this fundamental problem, yet the system continues to misidentify and underfund progressive efforts (poor health care, lack of start-up & research incentives, poor implementation of smarter systems, red tape that blocks grass-roots innovation of ALL sorts), much less provide an actionable framework for innovation behavior.<br />
<br />
So will meaningful change in our innovation policy require creative destruction and socio-economic calamity as a big the kick in the ass? Or will an explosion of bottom-up innovation catalyze the intelligence growth that's required?<br />
<br />
The storyline of 2009 suggests the former option may be the more likely future, serving as a necessary a entropy clearing shake-out, allowing us to better align national resources with national priorities. Barring the emergence of some highly effective social media structures capable of diffusing up through and reforming government, an offbeat but realistic scenario, it seems we're destined for some speed bumps on the road to innovating up to Bill Gates' standards.<br />
<br />
In the end, those challenges may prove critical to catalyzing acceleration in innovation and adaptation to a rapidly changing world economy. <br />
<br />
As Plato once wisely pointed out, "Necessity is the mother of invention." <br />
<br />
Related link:<br />
<a href="http://memebox.com/futureblogger/show/668-a-fourth-turning-is-near">Can we outrace the fourth turning? </a><br />
<br />
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<br />
Facebook and Google have me convinced that they're among the most foresighted of companies in the social media space. Understanding the value and nature of prosumers, developers, structured content, open source, and broader tech-info convergence, the gargantuan yet speedy pair (+ quickly growing thirdborn Twitter) are jockeying to connect to more data, brains and meaningful partnerships. The result is fierce, healthy competition that's accelerating the pace and manner of social software platform releases.<br />
<br />
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Yesterday, Facebook <a href="http://socialnode.blogspot.com/2009/10/facebook-keeping-pace-with-googles-open.html">announced a set of smart maneuvers</a> clearly spurred on by Google's aggressively open strategy, including one called Open Graph (you can tell just by the name that this is a Zuckerberg baby) that <b>will allow website builders everywhere to build Facebook-style pages</b>, complete with many of the platform's bells and whistles - a very logical follow up to Google Friend Connect.<br />
<br />
This morning, it's rumored that <a href="http://thenextweb.com/appetite/2009/10/30/breaking-google-wave-opened-federation-today-host/">Google will announce the opening of their Wave servers for federation</a> later in the day. Much like the release of Wave itself, the move, initially promised when <a href="http://wave.google.com/help/wave/about.html#video">Google announced Wave at I/O</a> on May 28, comes very early in the Wave life cycle and allows any skilled-enough third party developers to use build custom websites, apps and back-ends using the platform.<br />
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What will they build? Based on my experience with Wave (Team Whizzlr took <a href="http://www.whizzlr.com/">6th place at a Wave Campout</a> in August for our real-time massively multiplayer quiz game) I can say that <b>Wave will be a remarkable tool for a fairly narrow set of uses</b>, at least initially. It rocks as a platfrom for complex communication in a single place, real-time or longitudinal, making it ideal for 1) functional tasks like document collaboration (Google Docs +), focus grouping, surveying, invitation management, reddit-in-email (Kudos to the GTUG team that designed Blip Appeal - in-stream up/down voting for Wave Blips), dynamic web commenting that takes place simultaneously wherever Wave extensions are placed, new forms of blogging, etc, and also 2) fun activities like PMOGs, massive real-time quiz competitions, Fantasy Football clones run inside tyour email but also on another site, and <u>other casual apps that currently sit atop the Facebook or iPhone platforms</u>.<br />
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Put another way, the Wave platform uses HTML 5 cacheing to allow developers to shrink different web applications that we're accustomed to experiencing discretely, combine them in a single location, replicate Wave functionality WHEREVER they choose (thanks to Wave federation), and to mix and mingle all of these Wavelets. From a systems standpoint this looks like a clear path to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasystem_transition">MetaSystem Transition</a> (MST)in the browser-enabled web app world:<br />
<blockquote>Wikipedia - <i>A metasystem transition is the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence" title="Emergence">emergence</a>, through <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution" title="Evolution">evolution</a>, of a higher <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level" title="Level">level</a> of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization" title="Organization">organization</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control" title="Control">control</a>. Prime examples are the <a class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life" title="Origin of life">origin of life</a>, the transition from unicellular to <a class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicellular" title="Multicellular">multicellular</a> organisms, and the emergence of <a class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic" title="Symbolic">symbolic</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought" title="Thought">thought</a>. A <a class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasystem" title="Metasystem">metasystem</a> is formed by the integration of a number of initially independent components, such as <a class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecules" title="Molecules">molecules</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_%28biology%29" title="Cell (biology)">cells</a> or individiduals, and the emergence of a system steering or controlling their interactions. As such, the collective of components becomes a new, goal-directed <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual" title="Individual">individual</a>, capable of acting in a coordinated way. This metasystem is more <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complexity_theory" title="Complexity theory">complex</a>, more <a class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent" title="Intelligent">intelligent</a>, and more flexible in its actions than the initial component systems.</i><br />
</blockquote>This, I believe, is the way the Google Brass and Wave Team regard this new platform. It is their confidence in this model, mixed with excitement from a certain class of clammoring developers that recognize this long-term potential, plus their successful experiences with open-sourcing code (Android, Chrome, App Engine) that spurred them to announce the unpolished product in Mat and release Wave in Alpha this past summer. -- They certainyl <a href="http://scobleizer.com/2009/10/01/google-wave-crashes-on-beach-of-overhype/">got a lot of flack</a> for it. <br />
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Whether or not this play bears fruit (I've been a believer from the start, mostly because I love what it <i>could</i> mean for the web), social media thinkers like Zuckerberg and Facebook's strategic team clearly must view Wave as an assault into their niche and future niches they'd like to dominate, not to mention a big play to convert developers to Google App Engine disciples. They have to take the possibility of a Wave Tsunami seriously, even if the likelihood is moderatley low.<br />
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So, is it a coincidence that Facebook has announced Open Graph and a slew of developer-focused goodies on the day prior to the Google Wave Federation? Probably not.<br />
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Is it a Open Graph a necessary (defensive + offensive) response to Google's maneuvering in the Wave space? Absolutely.<br />
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(That said, this emerging battle is at the same time component of a larger war between the two. How I would love to speak candidly with their strategists/futurists...)<br />
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Earlier this year I was <a href="http://memebox.com/futureblogger/show/1522-facebook-reaches-150-million-users-zuckerberg-likens-user-base-to-a-country">openly wondering</a> about Facebook's prosumer strategy. Since then I've seen Facebook make some truly brilliant moves, mostly in response to the growing Google and Twitter threat, that reveal just how much they do realize the fundamental importance of prosumers and developers (the two are very narrowly separated).<br />
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Thus, we've seen these companies move from launching products in Beta (Google is the pbvious trailblazer here), to Alpha and now to laying out 6-month roadmpas for developers and users (Facebook yesterday <a href="http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=326">announced this</a>), in just a few short years.<br />
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Make no mistake about it, fueled by Moore's Law, <a href="http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2008/11/zuckerbergs_sec.php">Zuckerberg's Second Law</a>, and <a href="http://memebox.com/futureblogger/show/147-worldwide-information-growth-faster-than-previously-estimated">Exponential Data Proliferation</a>, this behavior is a manifestation of convergent accelerating change. As such, expect other industries to follow suit (especially those dominated by massive players) as their operations are increasingly virtualized and they too can act in a more fluid manner. Newspapers, film studios, gaming companies, health care providers, and so forth, are all on the queue.<br />
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In the meantime, players like Google, Facebook and Twitter that strategize according to these theoretical acceleration and systems principles have a serious advantage. Do not underestimate the power of such simulations and nerds.<br />
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The new service is an awesome demonstration of the potent products that can spring from Google's rich, structured data core. Could the company monetize this directly? Absolutely. But they won't because it's even more important for Google to 1) encourage Android phone purchases by offering this amazing feature (expect this to last a short while then migrate to iPhone as well), 2) popularize a new platform that sucks in structured data (much like the free and similarly sweet 1-800-GOOG-411) and 3) generate good will toward the G-Brand.<br />
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Expect increasingly more babies from Google's fertile data womb in the near future. <br />
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<ul><li><b> Facebook Platform: </b>A rich and well-thought out <a href="http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=326">suite of developer-facing support code, information and services</a> including a heretofore unprecedented 6-month developer roadmap and a major focus on simplicity (similar to Google's maneuvers).<br />
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</ul><ul><li><b>Open Graph: </b>Part of Facebook platform, a <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/29/with-open-graph-facebook-sets-out-to-make-the-entire-web-its-tributary-system/">vague announcement</a> about a new API that will allow website builders everywhere to build Facebook-style pages, complete with many of the platform's bells and whistles. A logical follow up to Google Friend Connect, this lines up with Mark Zuckerberg's <a href="http://memebox.com/futureblogger/show/1522-facebook-reaches-150-million-users-zuckerberg-likens-user-base-to-a-country">January comments</a> on the decentralization of the platform and follows Google's strategic open API lead, reinforcing that walled graden large scale social media is on its way out. <br />
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</ul><ul><li><b>Developer Access to User Email Addresses:</b> A minor move with major impications. This will allow Facebook app developers the ability to reach out to users directly, massively increasing the value proposition for certain apps, especially those hooked into big companies looking for more marketing value via FB.<br />
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</ul>The moves reinforce the trend of increasing openness of large-scale social platforms. Google and Twitter have been trailblazing. Now Facebook has made up serious ground. <br />
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MySpace is refocused on music and, based on<a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aX6CarmEjeK4"> a possible deal with Facebook</a>, seems to be moving in the right direction. <br />
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Microsoft and Yahoo, though they're seriously focused on developers are working to grock the seriousness of the prosumer game and <a href="http://memebox.com/futureblogger/show/1426-the-mandate-of-kevin">Mandate of Kevin</a>. But rest assured, they'll be announcing similar changes shortly because there will be no other option. This will require a shift in internal culture that may result in deeper level shakeups at these not quite fast-follower entities.<br />
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Viva los prosumer!<br />
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<ul><li>Facebook announced the impending launch of its own social search platform + a deal with minority investor Microsoft that brings FB status updates to Bing. </li>
</ul><ul><li>Google announced a new <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10380739-36.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20">Social Search</a> capability that pulls friend-relevant data from most core social networks with the notable exception of Facebook + <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10380615-36.html?tag=mncol;txt">a deal with Twitter</a> to bring real-time tweets to the search engine.</li>
</ul><ul><li>Microsoft announced the Facebook/Bing deal + a Twitter deal virtually identical to Google's.</li>
</ul><ul><li>Twitter stuck to its open-expansion-uber-alles strategy, announcing it's willing to play nice with anyone who will help it fend off Facebook from its niche.<br />
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</ul>The moves clearly demonstrate the increasing value of structured social data (aka the emerging social graph) to search services and should silence skeptics that have complained about the valuation of large social networks.<br />
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They also demonstrate one form of massive disruption to search markets: <b>an all-out race to subsume new pools of structured data</b>. It's obvious that Facebook and Microsoft, who recently unveiled <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/21/what-wolfram-alpha-really-did-this-summer-struck-a-deal-with-bing/">a deal to subsume computational search engine Wolfram Alpha</a>, see this as one of the more effective strategies for countering Google's seach dominance. <br />
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<b>Prediction:</b> Once these big deals are wrapped up I expect that <b>we'll witness a slew of search-access deals with companies that control pools of unique search-relevant data</b> (e.g. IBM,Technorati, Second Life, stallite mapping services), perhaps eventually resulting in granular opt-in controls (similar to Google AdSense) for smaller niche federations looking to monetize their proprietary data.<br />
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Just think of search engines as big brains competing to integrate modules of novel, search-relevant structured data.<br />
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Viewing search from this perspective brings much necessary context to Google's long-term search growth plan, explaining why seemingly disparate initiatives like Maps, Earth, Google 411, books, etc are actually part of a cohesive strategy that will consistently add value to the company's core search offering over the coming years. It is this deliberately planned integration that Google appears poised to retain its dominance. Thus, minus an Earth-shattering search AI breakthrough, direct competitors like Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook must acquire or grow their own pools of unique, relevant and integratable structured data if they are to keep pace.<br />
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At the same time, expect new entrants in regions such as Russia, China and India to either license their data to the hungry big boys or focus on the expansion of their native search efforts. All that's required is some magic translation pixie dust. Oh snap, Google appears to have that technology marketed cornered.<br />
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<b>Conclusion:</b> The social graph turkey is but a single, albeit core, item on the long table of search. Expect many more scrumptious, exotic foods to emerge from the data kitchen. Google does and has been adjusting its digestive technologies accordingly.<br />
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