Archive
Tim O’Reilly on thinking about the future
Mary Meeker, “Internet Trends” October 2011
Latest internet trends
Mary Meeker’s latest round of data and insight on the state of the internet – interesting as ever…
Tim O’Reilly talks Gov 2.0 and education
Good interview with Tim O’Reilly, who is always interesting. In particular he talks about education and the change that needs to happen so that learning moves on from “accumulating knowledge” to “solving problems”.
Firms and the fuzz use big data and Facebook to catch crooks and customers
Companies can spot … influencers, and work out all sorts of other things about their customers, by crunching vast quantities of calling data with sophisticated “network analysis” software… The market for such software is booming. By one estimate there are more than 100 programs for network analysis, also known as link analysis or predictive analysis. The raw data used may extend far beyond phone records to encompass information available from private and governmental entities, and internet sources such as Facebook.
• The Economist: Mining social networks: Untangling the social web
Internet trends 2009
A couple of very interesting presentations looking at where we are today and where things are heading…
• Economy + Internet Trends – Presentation from Web 2.0 Summit
and…
Review: Here Comes Everybody
After the relative disappointments of the last two books I’ve read (Grown Up Digital and Free) this one by Clay Shirky really does stand out. I’ve known about this book for a while and even bought a copy as a present for somebody, so I decided it was time to take a read for myself. I wasn’t disappointed.
The text has a real “warm” feeling to it, with the odd splash of humour. You feel that Shirky has really thought about what he wants to say and has taken time to express his ideas. He puts his ideas forward very clearly and there are many moments when you go “yes, that’s true” or “I hadn’t thought of it that way.” His main point is that people will come together (for whatever purpose) if you remove the barriers to that happening – and that is what is occurring now with the use of technology and online social tools (email, blogs, wikis and more.)
One area where he excels is looking at the media, in particular newspapers and journalism . His chapter “Everyone is a Media Outlet” sums up the main points incredibly well, especially in relation to the effect of amateurization on the profession of journalist. What is a journalist these days – who qualifies? – now that anyone can publish their own content to the world, effectively for free. Where others can spend countless thousands of words dealing with the plight of newspapers, Shirky can seemingly simply conclude:
If everyone can do something, it is no longer rare enough to pay for, even if it is vital.
And when you think about it, that is one of the core problems news organisations are facing, pure and simple.
This book easily joins the group of iconic “technology / business” books such as The Long Tail, The World is Flat, Wikinomics, The Search and (for me) Outliers. Read it today, sleep on it and feel more informed tomorrow.
Web Squared
I really enjoy watching the videos and interviews that come out of the Web 2.0 summits / conferences. Now the organisers (Tim O’Reilly and John Battelle) are thinking out loud about what is coming next: Web Squared. Here are some of the things that are likely to change the way we work and play in the next few years:
• the Web getting smarter – developing a better understanding of meaning and context, with more information from sensors (and humans too…) and better ways of finding patterns in data, leading to previously unnoticed (or unobtainable) insights (also see Wired on the “petabyte age”)
• augmented reality – let the Web make your eyes smarter! (how about this for starters? Or this?)
• real time – what’s on the world’s mind; live information and reaction and the impact on business
• location
The next summit is coming in October – will be well worth checking out. In the meantime…
O’Reilly / Berners-Lee speak
The Web 2.0 Expo has recently finished and there were a number of interesting talks made available online, in particular Tim O’Reilly covering a number of ideas:
• Other speakers at the conference
Tim Berners-Lee has been talking linked data at TED:
Tim O’Reilly on Triangulation
Tim O’Reilly is always interesting.
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