Quickthink

I held out and did not buy an IPad. The main reason is that I wasn’t sure what I would do with it, other than buy stuff (apps and subscriptions). It seemed more like a tool designed to get me to spend money more than anything else. And I have not been in the mood to spend.

Then I got a hand-me down IPad for Christmas and I have been fooling around with it for a few weeks. The good news is that I have not spent any money on digital products - yet. I have enjoyed consuming a bunch of free stuff (and btw, the new Apple earphones work very well for the price).

I also can see that the IPad is good for a few things - such as organizing stuff. I do that via Google Calendar and Drive. And btw, I am learning to love these Google products. So I am still not 100% sure what my IPad is for, but I am getting a lot more out of Google these days.

I don’t know about you, but I am getting a bit bored with the “social dimension” of the web. The main problem that I have is that it is not really social at all. I don’t really develop new relationships via the social web. Nor does the social web enrich the relationships that I have.

This does not mean that I am giving up on the potential of the web. To the contrary. But I am looking for something new that I cannot yet find. What does that new thing look like? Here are a few aspects

• It should be about inspiration, not just speculation. Too much web content boils down to predictions based on opinion. Too little web content opens my eyes to something new
• It should connect me to stories, not personalities. I find the idea of counting Facebook friends to be ridiculous. How about counting how many great stories you are connected to instead?
• It should be genuinely useful, not just a way to kill time. There is a hell of a lot of noise on the web, which is ok if you are in the mood to waste time. There is too little connection to learning how to live better.

Any ideas about how to mold the web to get more of the above?

BTW, after writing the above, I bumped into two web resources that are useful. The first is a short video from McKinsey advocating a global movement in “education to employment”  I got that via McKinsey’s email newsletter. An almost social experience. The second is a post in Venture Beat by Eyal Bino arguing that software developers working outside the US should stop trying to write for the US consumer market. Silicon Valley does that better. But there is room for new enterprise products. Good tip Eyal! I got it from my Zite aggregation delivered to my IPad.

In a truly social net environment, these would connect me to folks, right?

The adventure of space exploration so far has mostly been about getting there. So, we got into orbit. Then we got to the moon. Now we talk about getting to Mars. BTW, this is not unlike the earlier adventure humans faced in crossing the oceans. Columbus, et al, were a big deal because they got somewhere, not because they did anything useful once they arrived. Indeed, Columbus wasn’t even sure where he arrived at (he thought it was China).

But I suspect that a new sort of space adventure is creeping up on us. It is about being there. But before these stories start emerging, we will need to upgrade our capacity so that getting there becomes more routine. That is why I think NASA’s decision to privatize rocket launching is brilliant. The private sector is great at lowering costs and building routines. So SpaceX et al will do great by making it easier to get there. And getting there will seem a bit boring over time.

Well, there is one more aspect of the transport story line that needs work. Along the way to making transport routine, we need to develop better technology for using energy in space. We need to connect space travel less with rocketry (blast off) than with space only vehicles. This is all about new designs that take advantage of what space offers.

That is why I enjoyed reading this Kickstarter proposal asking for a relatively small amount of money to improve plasma jet engine design.  The argument is that plasma jet engines are the future of in space travel.

Are they? Let’s see.

It has been argued that the 20th century was the century of oil. Oil gave mankind a relatively cheap and seemingly inexhaustible supply of energy. This, in turn, drove development of a broad range of new technologies and life styles. But sadly, oil reserves are not unlimited and we are struggling to find alternatives. On top of that, global climate change suggests that whatever alternatives we come up with, they cannot pump more carbon into the air.

So, is the 21st century going to be the sad century where humankind was forced off its addiction to oil? Where life styles were severely reduced because there was no alternative that worked so well?

It is possible. So far, even with advances in the use of renewable energy sources, we do not have satisfactory technological solutions to our energy and climate issues. But … consider that we might be able to take carbon from the air to make fuel. Indeed, as Salon reports, British scientists are already doing it on a small scale.  Now that would be a game changer.

This may or may not work. But hold onto your hats. We are likely to see quite a few new technologies that change how we think of energy production and use in the 21st century. We may become experts at “unlocking” the carbon around us for use and reuse as fuel (not just sequestering it). Why am I so optimistic? Because of something new that is already here — vastly expanded capacity to share knowledge that speeds up innovation.

Rights holders have been arguing for some time now that web platforms should install automatic systems to detect and block content that violates copyright. This sounds good on the surface. But there are several problems. First, these systems are expensive. And if platforms are generally expected to install them, guess what? The little guys will have to live with more risk of doing without because they can’t afford them. Second, they don’t work that well. Case in point. Streaming of the Hugo Awards were shut down by bots. Then the Democratic National Convention. In both cases, the shut downs were a surprise and not justified.

Tech Dirt uses the word “insane”. One aspect of this is a bit crazy. The bots are apparently a lot easier to turn on than they are to modulate. Like zooming along at 100 mph without any brakes?

FOLLOW -  Fred Wilson posts about frictionless licensing for photo rights. He may be right that other groups of rights holders will move in this direction.

2d FOLLOW -  EFF gives an overview of the bot problem and some sensible advice about bot design.

TED is fun. And it offers great mind candy. But it also has limits. And those limits are becoming more obvious as we move from TED, the phenomenon, to TED culture. What do I mean?

Well, the TED phenomenon was something new - a merger of high brow thinking and entertaining presentation. The rest of us got exposed to “great ideas” that we could understand and get excited about. Nothing wrong with that. But after some years, the phenomenon has become a bit long in the tooth. TED needed to move on to the next step. And the great minds behind TED appear to have grabbed onto something that I call TED culture.

TED culture is about promoting a permanent sense of wonder about the future and the super smart people who will shape it. What is wrong with that? Read Evgeny Morozov’s piece in The New Republic  called “The Naked and the TED” and you will see.

I think that this is a dead end. The reason? Simple. TED’s original weakness was the idea that inspiration alone leads to societal change. Sorry. Inspiration needs to awaken leadership for change to happen. TED culture should have, but does not strengthen the leadership element of the TED experience. Instead, it has become more narcissistic. Ooops.

FOLLOW -  Felix Salmon at Reuters shoots another arrow at TED - his point is that the quest for great story lines is trumping the quest for nuance and tries to link TED to the Jonah Lehrer messtoid.

The Economist has a fun article about this year’s 24 hour car race at Le Mans. The fun is supplied by a radical new car design called the Deltawing. Very cool. And this is even more cool

So popular was the little DeltaWing with fans that when it was forced into the crash barrier by a Toyota driver who did not see it creeping cheekily alongside, the number of people listening to the race commentary on Radio Le Mans fell by 30%. Will it race again? Probably. But most likely under different management. Mr Bowlby designed the DeltaWing as an open-source project, so other teams could build their own versions to race.

Let’s see if the other teams take note.

I never really liked URL’s but I have learned to appreciate them. Now I read that they are on the way out. Too clunky. Hashtags will enable us to aggregate and keep up with aggregated content much better.

This is a big deal for people (like me) who are in the business of tracking storylines. In the bad old days, you needed lots and lots of contacts with people who were willing to share papers and articles - source materials. Uggh. Search coupled with email has made this more manageable. But search doesn’t help build group dynamics around a learning curve. If hashatags and related newer technology gives us a more powerful tool, I am all for it.

A nice post by Cringe today on Microsoft’s excellent day

Microsoft’s Hollywood announcement Monday of its two Surface tablet computers was a tactical triumph but had no strategic value for the world’s largest software company because the event left too many questions unanswered. If I were to guess what was on Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s mind it was simply to beat next week’s expected announcement of a Google brand tablet running Android. Microsoft, already playing catch-up to Apple’s iPad, did not want to be seen as following Google, too. So they held an event that was all style and no substance at all.

Matt Howard offers three trends in digital markets

1. software rather than product

As economic uncertainty continues, enterprises are less willing to risk investments in big software installations. It is simpler and cheaper to buy software on tap as a service. Upgrades are less disruptive, too, because they happen much more incrementally.

2. customized mobility

Smartphones and tablets have been spreading like wildfire and are changing assumptions about user interfaces and content displays. However, the kind of mobility enterprises increasingly want extends far beyond these portable devices.

3. more agile software development

The agile software development method has been streamlining traditional software development significantly for years. Moving agile software development into the cloud produces some big synergies by enabling additional levels of automation.

interesting stuff.