AlwaysOn Network 2005 Innovation Summit: "The Giant Brain is US!"
God, I LOVE Stanford in July! Just walking the campus and taking in the lovely sights raises one's IQ by at least 10% ... Wow, finally into the triple digits!!!
"The Giant Brain is US!"
Teilhard de Chardin posited the Omega Point, the culmination of the transformation of the Biosphere into the Noosphere, a transhuman consciousness composed of all the interacting minds on Earth. John Perry Barlow said "The point of all evolution up to this stage is the creation of a collective organism of Mind." And the predicted future event known as the Singularity is the point where our environment is changed by this evolving transhuman intelligence beyond the capability of pre-Singularity humans to understand ...
Welcome to the Always On 2005 Innovation Summit!
Adding to last year's theme of "Open Source Everything", this year the AO 2005 Innovation Summit motto is "The Giant Brain is US!"
The Giant Brain Speaks
Ok, Giant Brain ... Whazzup?! Well, I heard a few pithy quotes flying about during the AO 2005 Innovation Summit:
"... I hate technology ..."
"... Nobody cares whether it's Open Source or not ... Solaris is Open Source ..."
"... I've learned never to answer a question before it's asked ..." [ Jerry Brown ]
"... You have to pretend to be in control ..." [ Andy Grove ]
"... Television is dead ... well almost ..." [ George Gilder ]
"... Going against Open Source is like going against gravity ..."
"... It's not a lock-in ... it's a LOVE In! ..."
"... It's not Kumbaya ... it's Capitalism! ..."
"... Let's be empiricists instead of idealists ..." [ Jaron Lanier ]
"... Bubbles precede build-outs ..."
"... History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes ..." [ "Mark Twain", aka Samuel Clemens, via Andy Kessler ]
"... Technologies are not simply inventions which people employ but are the means by which people are re-invented ..." [ Marshall McLuhan, via 'William' ]
"... Changing The Person, One World At A Time ..." ['William' ]
And let's not forget Tim Draper's surprising dance moves during the Skype VideoPhone Theme Song. Well actually maybe we should try to forget all that ... if possible. Sorry about that, Giant Brain.
Giant Brain Television: Tyrant Tool or Smart Endpoint?
Another AO 2005 Innovation Summit tenet is "pushing all knowledge to the edge." Ah, but "knowledge to the edge" means smarter endpoints, doesn't it? Well maybe ... consider this Marshall McLuhan quote:
"... The peculiar and abstract manipulation of information is a means of creating wealth ..."
To me, this seems right in line with smarter endpoints, using knowledge at the edge. It means smarter personalized content & communications, smarter targeted advertising media opportunities, and above all, raising the standards for smart user interactions. All of this is great Innovation Summit fodder. Especially the wealth part. And the peculiar part.
Here's what George Gilder says about Television, from his 1994 book, "Life After Television":
"Television is a tool of tyrants. Its overthrow will be a major force for freedom and individuality, culture and morality. That overthrow is at hand." (p 49)
George reaffirmed this position during his AO 2005 presentation, but I wonder what he might think of the Sony PSP? What happens when television becomes another smart endpoint, a multimedia communications gateway and informational media command and control center? Yeah, I know, then we would call it a laptop! ...
Bad Giant Brain. No Posting to alt.pathogens.sequences!
Watching George Gilder and Bill Joy together on the same stage was highly entertaining. George was both animated and adamant regarding how technology would be our path to 'out-innovating' our problems. George believes that the expression of our inherent creativity is some sort of a divine right. However, Bill Joy was more concerned about posting the genetic sequences of pathogens on the Internet. George's position is more comfortable for techies, and Bill's position alarms policy makers. Obviously, Open Source doesn't apply to the genetic sequence of the polio virus. Correct? Luckily, Jaron Lanier was a moderating(!) influence on stage, calling for personal responsibility and ethical remedies.
What about other types of personal meta-data, besides your own personal genetic sequence? From a user service policy perspective, personal meta-data regarding personal habits, behaviors, and preferences should be assumed closed unless volunteered under specific circumstances. Emerging open standards like Attention.XML, unfortunately not mentioned during the panel discussions, can become a serious threat to user privacy if abused. Luckily, there's plenty of attention being given to Attention.XML. (Ouch, that one hurt the Giant Brain!)
Joe Kraus mentioned his experiences in Washington with DigitalConsumer.org and expressed dismay regarding Silicon Valley's apparent disregard for politics ... and how this position is simply not acceptable. However, this could be juxtaposed against the fact that Mark Cuban is underwriting the Grokster legal expenses ... ah, but Mark is from Dallas, not Silicon Valley. Yee-Haw, Howdy PARDNER!
Giant Brain Gets Smarter & Richer!
Speaking about smart endpoints, what about Smartphone 2010? Well, that's only five years away, so our bet is a fully programmable (open source) tablet style device, with modular WiFi and other WAN options for multi-network access and smart home functionality. Skype-enabled, of course.
Alice Gast, MIT VP for Research and Associate Provost, briefly described MIT's OpenCourseWare Project, which makes the content for over 1100 MIT courses readily available to anyone with an internet connection. Our vote for best use of Open Source Media to date.
And would you believe an OpenYahoo!? Me neither. But apparently, this is the case ... and there are plenty of developer APIs to prove it. Now, we do need to look at the fine print regarding the actual traffic service fees ... but more and more web services are being offered from large scale players to monetize web traffic in a variety of ways via affiliate / associate rev share programs.
Giant Brain Blogging for Fun & Profit
So what are the basic business models for blogging? Mark Cuban says that if you are just blogging on a topic near and dear to your heart, forget about making any money ... just treat it as your avocation. Since blogs are a form of media, media business models would seem relevant. These models involve some mix of advertising, co-promotions, and premium service revenue models in order to be a sustainable media business. Advertising models require significant traffic and targeted audience demographics to be effective monetarily. Premium services and co-promotions require up-front capital investment prior to any cash flow. Given these observations, aggregation and hosting service models seem the way to go ...
The AlwaysOn Network will launch GoingOn in the Fall of 2005, a new service that acts like a "network of networks" designed to leverage the existing AlwaysOn social network and additional networks that users may create and that are hosted by the GoingOn service. This should provide some interesting targeted advertising revenue opportunities and other business development programs.
Giant Brain, What Was The Question?
When queried to give the ultimate answer that would explain "God, life, the universe, and everything", the supercomputer in Douglas Adams' classic "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" takes seven and a half million years to respond. Nobody remembers the original question, but the ultimate answer is: 42.
A contest is held to see if anyone can come up with the original question.
Final Winner: "How many roads must a man walk down?"
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