Topic: The Future
Leading a panel of several investing experts, James Enck points out several challenges the telecommunications value chain faces after the recent recession. Several problems might mirror the dot-com bubble, but investors and entrepreneurs also have new obstacles, including the increasing importance of online businesses and infrastructure, the varying need for capital and smaller profit margins, and the continued instability of the credit market.
A primary goal for developers has been to attract eyeballs and create "addictive" experiences. Kelly Goto advises against encouraging addictive behavior in development and innovation. According to Goto human-to-machine communication is presently the standard. As machine-to-human communication and innovation becomes more common, Goto wonders if this will begin a new phase for enhancement of the user experience.
She had no professional background or experience, but was fully inspired when she sent her shot-in-the-dark email to NASA asking to volunteer. Their receptiveness launched Ariel Waldman into her mission to make space exploration more accessible to the public. In this presentation, she explains that engaging the public is not about corny, sci-fi costuming. It's about removing barriers so inspired people can explore, participate and spread their inspiration.
Our long-term interaction with the web will be defined by six trends. These trends will will involve dramatic changes that will make computing more like what we are used to seeing in many of today's movies. Kevin Kelly explains why he believes that soon the internet will beneficially surround us in ways that most users don't imagine today.
The disruption of innovation has yielded as many opportunities for those prepared to take advantage as it has brought disruption for those unprepared to adjust. New businesses have been able to profit with solutions that solve problems or enable previously excluded people to participate on their own terms. Michael Jackson explores some history and characteristics of disruptive technology.
David Messenger, EVP at American Express, discusses the drivers, or central forces, behind the changing technological world. He names four that he considers to be the most important, as follows: cell phones, rapid wireless data speeds, social networks, and new technology in general, both hardware and software. Presenting these changes with a business perspective, Messenger also discusses changes such as digital cash, security, and unlimited communication.
This audio interview from the Environmental Defense Fund's Future of Green Calls covers complex interactions of the philanthropy sector, socially conscientious nonprofit organizations, and for-profit businesses with FSG Co-Founder Mark Kramer. Kramer outlines how corporate social responsibility (CSR) acts as a lever to minimize environmental harms done by daily business activities. Also covered are how natural resources are consumed by industries and a discussion about sustainability practices.
According to Steve Yegge, Google is trying to change the world, but the problem is scale. The problems are also every social, technological, and mathematical problem imaginable. Yegge advocates for the focus on not only social media and money, but solutions to human genome coding and any issue of scale. Interweaving an analysis of popularized media and companies with philanthropic goals, he gives a rousing and humorous call to action.
During the dot com bubble of the 1990s European bankers went to telecom company CEOs and said you can be as sexy as the American dot coms. This is the basis of what went wrong for the telecom industry according to James Enck. He observes that this panel discussion has a wide range of speakers and backgrounds but there are commonalities he guides the panel to discuss with the 2008 financial meltdown in hindsight.
A fascinating look into the future of big data. As parallel computing enables massive scaling & instant availability, the need for cloud computing is mandatory. During this keynote, Marten Mickos predicts that in several years there will be a trillion devices connected to the Internet. We are rapidly reaching a point that the only way to deal with this level of scaling will be through cloud computing.
