Grasping Change - A Whole New Mind

In Pink's book, A Whole New Mind, the author correctly identifies a series of trends and changes, many of which have been previously addressed here, that predict a shift from left brain to right brain humans being the source of advancing society in the coming years. The book explores the nature of personal fulfillment and humanity as well as shifts and the related revolution. An oustanding book where some of the concepts speak to organizational issues and trends regarding the nature of the consumer or member participant and how relationships with these players and various shifts in demography are creating radical change. Highly recommended is the 2004  Bentley College lectrures on Does Marketing Need Reform ?, which expertly reflects on these issues with well regarded philosophers versed on the topic.

The Continued Evolution of the World Wide Web

A much-read article in the New York Times last November clarified an emerging debate about what would or should be called “Web 3.0”. In it, John Markoff defined Web 3.0 as a set of technologies that offer efficient new ways to help computers organize and draw conclusions from online data, and that definition has since dominated discussions at conferences, on blogs, and among entrepreneurs. "There is a clear understanding that there have to be better ways to connect the mass of data online and interrogate it," says Daniel Waterhouse, a partner at the venture capital firm 3i. Waterhouse calls himself skeptical of the "Web 3.0" hyperbole but has invested in at least one Semantic Web-based business, the U.K. company Garlik. "We're just at the start," he says. "What we can do with search today is very primitive."

Communicating relevant information in a relevant manner is fundamental to delivering experiences that expands ones views and understandings; the essence of the value of the Internet. For some time now, and from now on, content will be the most element. Whether it's a product description or catalog entry, an e-mail dialogue, or Web-marketed hard goods, the ability to deliver the appropriate content to the appropriate recipients is the essence of creating value.

As the Web evolves, it's becoming different, very different. The pursuit of the semantic Web.is a major aspect of the shift and is planned to be integrated in the web 3.0. What the semantic Web's enthusiasts promise is the transformation of documents, videos, e-mails, music, images, everything — into elements of a database. This one database will stretch across, and through, the Web, and will be increasingly searchable in natural language, resulting in more effective searches from far more natural queries, generating far more specific and appropriate results from within Web pages, documents, videos, exclusive of the applications in which they were created or housed, rather than the morass of Web sites and pages that searches return now.

Like mashups on steroids, the difference is that the machines including your tools, programs, and software agents will do the mashing for you and those you are interacting with. For this approach to Web 3.0 to work the way the, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) envisions it, requires the development of "common formats for integration and combination of data drawn from diverse sources" – a true iteration or transformation of the way the Web works.

In short, it will be a Web of data designed or redesigned for interpretation by the machines we use to store and access the data. And that has big implications for the way we'll do things. For examples, humans on the web will be much more effective at identifying and reaching the precise people they want to reach, rather than today's "craft your keywords and trust you'll get proper placement" approach. As browsers, calendars, clipboards grow more familiar with their users' preferences, histories, and needs, they'll be far likelier to bring relevant content to the users attention as opposed to the current dependence upon carefully crafted keywords vying to catch the attention of a search engine.

What this evolution of the Web truly represents, is another step to intelligence being created in the machines, making our lives simpler and more rich and changing everything about what we do and how we do it.

 

Business Meets Social Networks

While their use is still largely limited to less-than-critical purposes, online social networking services are becoming more popular each day. Dating, hobby-related hookups, and party announcements are some of the many trivial pursuits people seek on Web sites like Friendster, MySpace, and Tribe.net.  But there is growing evidence to support claims that some social networking services (SNS for short) can be a powerful professional ally to businesses — in particular, independent entrepreneurs and smaller companies, for whom each new personal connection is a significant business building block. LinkedIn and ZeroDegrees are two of the more popular services that facilitate business-oriented connections, and some argue these and similar sites are now doing a better job at connectivity than ever before. Remember Metcalfe's Law — coined by the inventor of Ethernet — which states that the power of a network grows in proportion to the square of the number of its nodes? That's a geeky way of saying that networking technologies nobody uses are of limited value. As the popularity of SNS sites grows, so does their value, because a larger number of users mean better odds for productive connections. These tools for networking are going to increasingly become a part of mainstream business and will be used as an important tool to identify and interact with prospects and partners, fueling the business revolution. See Forbes new social network site. 

Adopting Innovation - The Medici Effect

When you step into the intersection of fields, disciplines, and cultures, existing concepts can be combined into a large number of extraordinary new ideas. The name given this phenomenon by author Frans Johansson is the Medici Effect and is based on a remarkable burst of creativity in fifteenth-century Italy.

The Medicis were a banking family in Florence that funded creators from a wide range of disciplines. Thanks to this family and a few others like it, sculptors, scientists, poets, philosophers, financiers, painters, and architects converged upon the city of Florence. There they found each other, learned from one another, and broke down barriers between disciplines. Together they forged a new world based on new ideas—what became known as the Renaissance. As a result, the city became the epicenter of a creative explosion, one of the most innovative eras in history. The effects of the Medici family can be felt even to this day.

Diversity is a key component of innovation. The adoption of technology is largely a social phenominon. Creating a culture that has enough variety to absorb new ideas is as important as the ideas themselves. A key component of the revolution is this diversity as demonstrated in the 15th century in Florence Italy.

Robotics and the Revolution

Robotics are becoming an increasingly relevant solution to simplistic and complex challenges in today's world. The exponential advancement of technologies are enabling companies to deliverthese technological tools more affordably. A recent US News Report entitled The Robot Revolution May Finally Be Here provides some examples of these solutions.  Even more compelling evidence of what is to come exists in video which displays the amazing capabilities of ASIMO. ASIMO, a robot designed by HONDA, is an amazing system that has done everything from working autonomously in offices as a group to conducting the Detroit Philharmonic Orchestra. This is but the beginning of a new day and what robots will do for humanity is more than cleaning floors. They will integrate into our every day life and shortly at that.