Social Node

To scale as quickly as Google has a new company will need to generate serious end-user value, monetize effecively, and take a new approach to human resources. One possible future Google is an organization specializing in prosumer-based quantification (structured crowd-sourced info mining) that can scale up very quickly based on contracts and growing content advertising rates. Such a company could have a large and very necessary effect on the global economy as we enter the knee of the curve. Here's a speculative timeline of such a company (2011-2015), dubbed Quantification Company, that I quickly threw together to get the discussion and simulation rolling: 2011 - Launch: A logical outgrowth of flash mobs, open mapping parties, and steadily rising prosumerism, the Quantification Company (QC) was created in 2011 with the mission of "organizing and accelerating the comprehensive quantification of Earth's most valued systems." The for-profit organization relied on...

Not only did Google add an ocean to its Earth platform today , the company also enabled "Historical Imagery", a new feature that brings to life a crude version of what Yale computer scientist David Gelernter 's 1992 prediction of the planet on a “time toggle”. The Google Blog: Until today, Google Earth displayed only one image of a given place at a given time. With this new feature, you can now move back and forth in time to reveal imagery from years and even decades past, revealing changes over time. Try flying south of San Francisco in Google Earth and turning on the new time slider (click the "clock" icon in the toolbar) to witness the transformation of Silicon Valley from a farming community to the tech capital of the world over the past 50 years or so. Along with a new 3d Mars feature, the additions have increased the scope and resolution of the largest publicly accessible simulation of our physical system, thus expanding the Google's information sc...