Sep 18th, 2008 |
David SparkInterop_NY: Tim O’Reilly on mobilizing people and devices to aid world issues
We’re moving away from a world where people typing on computers is driving all the collective intelligence applications, said Tim O’Reilly, Founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media during his keynote address at Interop in NYC. What’s happening is we’re moving towards the convergence of sensors on the real world being read by and contributed by devices we’re carrying around with us.
Referencing it being the next generation of coffeepot webcams we used to see during Web 1.0, O’Reilly said the new world is being powered by location aware systems, GPS, and devices Twittering their status. We’re instrumenting the world, said O’Reilly as he showed us a few examples:
- Washers and dryers at universities Twittering their availability.
- Plants instrumented to alert you when they’re dry and it’s time to water them.
- 3D visual models being built from collections of photos submitted from the crowd.
- An earthquake site that collects information sent in by motion sensing Macs (motion sensors are a standard feature in Macs).
- Social networks on mobile devices like Whrrl that detect other people nearby.
As evidenced by these examples, location sensing is and will continue to be one of the fundamental services as Web 2.0 technologies grow on devices.
The phone company can only make a connection, Web 2.0 technologies can do something with that connection
Web 2.0 communications tools and the phone company are very similar. The big difference is that the phone company can’t deliver real time user-facing services based on the data they collect. Sure they can tell you that a certain number called you at a certain time for a certain length of time, but that’s it. You can’t actually share, collect, and use that data. Web 2.0 tools can deliver tons of information connected to your communications.
In the business world we’re trying to be less like the phone company and bridge communications to information and people. Enterprise 2.0 means letting users into your back office, and turning your company inside out. If you don’t, you’ll have to wait for an innovative start up to do it for you.
O’Reilly argued that there’s so much good we can do with our collective knowledge and our ability to connect and share. He called on developers in the audience to connect the Web with the world for positive human reasons, and spend maybe a little less time developing “throw a sheep at your friend” applications.
Even if a feared outcome doesn’t happen, building value to prevent it still generates a positive outcome
We’re always making choices to act or not to act. And we choose to participate because we expect the outcomes will be better. But that shouldn’t always be the criteria, said O’Reilly. Using the example of global warming, O’Reilly said that even if you don’t believe it and it doesn’t come true, choosing to believe it and working to its solution will generate a positive outcome that will be better for you and everyone else. He likens this to Pascal’s Wager which states that even though by reason we can’t prove God exists, a person should still “wager” that he/she does because by making that choice you have everything to gain, and nothing to lose.
Take the data and feed it back out
The ideal situation would be if we created more value than we captured. In actuality, we consume more than we produce. O’Reilly believes the attitude of “let’s take more out of the system than we put back in” is what led to the demise of the Wall Street firms.
You have to get people involved. Some of the problems we face are our best opportunity. Rosie the Rivoter mobilized women to work in the factory when men were at war. After 9/11 we had no governmental collective action like that. Yet on the Web, there are tons of examples of threats causing people to collect and mobilize into action.
Future predictions are not easy, understood O’Reilly. No one would have trusted the motley group of Microsoft in 1978, and nobody believed the revenue potential of Google after seeing what Lycos and AltaVista were doing. It’s hard and scary to take chances.
Start ups have audacious attempts to tackle big problems. Don’t just dip into the muddy river of venture capital. That only lasts so long without a proven track record. Tim O’Reilly said we’re not done solving big problems. Build technology that makes the world a better place, create value for all of us.
Make sure you check out the summary of all coverage from Interop NY.
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