Silverchair Strategies

Some Context for ThinkingAbout the Future

Tim O’ReillyO’Reilly Media

Silverchair Strategies October 28, 2011

Wednesday, November 2, 11

You may know me as a computer book publisher




“The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.”

-Edwin Schlossberg



The Internet as Platform


How can you call it an operating system?

• No kernel

• No memory management

• No processor

Photo: Patrick Tufts http://www.flickr.com/photos/zippy/50537423/sizes/o/


An application that depends on cooperating cloud data services:

- Location

- Search

- Speech recognition- Live Traffic- Imagery

The Internet Operating System Controls Access to Data




Intelligence Augmentation

“One cannot hope thus to equal the speed and flexibility with which the mind follows an associative trail, but it should be possible to beat the mind decisively in regard to the permanence and clarity of the items resurrected from storage.

Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, "memex" will do.”

-Vannevar Bush, As We May Think, 1945





What’s Next?


The Semantic Web?

3.0?


A device that augments our senses as well as our ability to retrieve information.


A device that augments our senses as well as our ability to retrieve information.

And a device that maps sensory data onto a semantic database.


Getting Beyond “Information Retrieval”

Sensors + Semantics = Services



Artificial Intelligence

“the science and engineering of making intelligent machines” -John McCarthy, 1956


The Google Autonomous Vehicle


2005: Stanley Wins the DARPA Grand Challenge


The “intelligent” devices of the future are cloud-connected

“We don’t have better algorithms. We just have more data.” - Peter Norvig, Chief Scientist, Google


Human-Computer Symbiosis

“The hope is that, in not too many years, human brains and computing machines will be coupled together very tightly, and that the resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever thought and process data in a way not approached by the information-handling machines we know today.”

– Licklider, J.C.R., "Man-Computer Symbiosis", IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, vol. HFE-1, 4-11, Mar 1960. Eprint


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.C.R._Licklider

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.C.R._Licklider

http://medg.lcs.mit.edu/people/psz/Licklider.html

http://medg.lcs.mit.edu/people/psz/Licklider.html

Towards a global brain



A few key assertions• We are building a network-mediated global mind

• It is not skynet

• It is us, augmented


Harnessing Collective Intelligence

“global consciousness is that thing responsible for deciding that pots containing decaffeinated coffee should be orange”

– Danny Hillis (via Jeff Bezos)




“Would you be willing to cross the street with information that was five minutes old?”

-Jeff Jonas


“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.”

- John Wanamaker (1838-1922)



“Only 1% of healthcare spend now goes to diagnosis. We need to shift from the idea that you do diagnosis at the start, followed by treatment, to a cycle of diagnosis, treatment, diagnosis...as we explore what works.”

-Pascale Witz, GE Medical Diagnostics



for profit colleges




• strata


“How can applications be better when they are social?”

-Mark Zuckerberg



The Web Has an “Architecture of Participation”

• Small, modular pieces

• Joined by open communications protocols

• An open, standard data format

• Extensibility by design


The Web Has an “Architecture of Participation”

• Small, modular pieces

• Joined by open communications protocols

• An open, standard data format

• Extensibility by design

This is also true of open source software projects like Linux and Apache

This is what makes emergent behavior possible, with no prior agreement between the parties




wikipedia





“Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia. It is a virtual city, a city whose main export to the world is its encyclopedia articles, but with an internal life of its own.”


“The architecture of attention”


Kasparov vs. The World (1999)

“The greatest game in the history of chess.”

-Gary Kasparov

“Although Krush was inferior to Kasparov in nearly all areas of chess, in this particular area of microexpertise, she surpassed even him”



Don’t forget about the community

that creates your content



Software as a Service

Von Kempelen's Mechanical Turk




Software Above The Level of A Single Device



The spread of sensors

• sensor platform slide



Is there an opportunity for a standard data and connectivity platform for these UI-less devices?


The power of platforms: Create value for others


The power of platforms: Create value for others

4



Steve Jobs on Design

“In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me...design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/08/business/how-steve-jobs-infused-passion-into-a-commodity.html?hp=&pagewanted=all






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