The Bewilderness

Still walking the digital paradigm

A further examination of the augmented reality market provides indicators for when the technology will hit the market. Unsurprisingly, the military is a follower of head up displays and DARPA has contracted with Innovega for 'AR' contact lenses to be available by 2014. Innovega is viewed as providing the tools for enhancing the information available in training and on the battlefield, allowing soldiers to focus on objects both near and far to the viewer.

The marketplace is being worked upon. The aim is to achieve a seamless marriage of data and reality with constant updates, tagging and manipulation serving the needs of the fyborg. Such a transition, with the attendant wearables, remains some years away:

Today we update our status, favorite a tweet, check into a place we like and really are out to set or make any preferences that make our life more enjoyable. The day of tomorrow will be when our experiences will be more embedded into the real world rather than in this digital life form as they are now.

Why an augmented reality? Our usage of the Internet and these apps will reach a breaking point, and before or right when that happens, we will want all of these technology to be in the background — or at least these major technology companies will want augmented reality to truly be a reality.

Until we see these come to market, we remain focused on tablets, smartphones, apps and the current digital paradigm.

Will I be a fyborg by fifty?

Wearables, 'mediated reality', 'augmented reality' or whatever phrase is used is beginning to move swiftly from activist experimentation to commercial reality. The path has taken thirty years, from bulky headsets to slim glasses. Even if available, it is not clear if people will don a visual complement to their smartphones:

With technology finally catching up to mainstream ambitions, the next challenge is convincing the public that wearables are something they might want to, well, wear. 

When and if they do arrive, such devices will enrich the accessible platform that people utilise through their communications medium. Possibilities will be rapidly enhanced by the strong network of developers, applications and software enhancement. If wearables proves popular, one could foresee a rapid fyborgisation amongst certain communities.

And it will be cool to wear glasses again 

From IT to Business Technology

You want to respond to a new business opportunity. You want to see if the success of Wikipedia or Facebook can be harnessed for your company. You are tired of hearing that old refrains that the systems or the licence are just not able to do what you want them to do. Aren't we all frustrated that the business outcomes we want are not the business outcomes that we can do.

And for years, that has been the end of the story. This is not a critique of IT departments although some have moved heaven and work to create business process hell. This is to say that theforthcoming changes in technology: responding to the new distribution of the cloud, the greater flexibility of mobiles and the maturing of social networks; all of these will herald radical changes and, hopefully, better business.

Paul D. Hamerman of Forrester Research outlines seven of the trends that makes our life easier. Better processes can only come through testing, innovation and failure. But if the process fails, take your licks, learn and move forward. After all, wise words say,

In the near term - the next one or two years - social collaboration will sit alongside enterprise applications, as only a few enterprise application suppliers will harness it successfully in the context of enabling business processes. Effective use of social collaboration in enterprise applications and business processes will take several years to mature, eventually becoming a relatively ubiquitous and standardised feature.

In a few years, we will look back and wonder what all the fuss was about as we deal with even greater changes kicking in.

Core competence can lead to stagnation

Running through an interview with Jeff Bezos on Les Echos reminds me that the mass take-up of the internet stretches to one decade, no more. All of our household names have sprang up in that time.

Bezos ruminates on how Amazon has survived and thrived as an internet firm. The death of the core competence is celebrated; the search for stability is actually stagnation. Bezos highlights the cultural adaptations of Amazon: obsession with the customer, not the competitor; an ability to think over the long-term; and, the courage to learn whole new sets of skills and build new institutions if that is required to build a profitable service.

In fast growing sectors, companies can acquire the skills of the conglomerate: acquiring, seizing, learning, innovating and adapting. Sticking to one's knitting is a recipe for stagnation as all profitability is open to disruption.

A core competence is now extend and profit.

The connecting of things is a forthcoming matter

Wi-fi was not taken up universally due to conflicts over standards. This impeded the gradual adoption of the technology. Such a history has provided strong incentives for the industry to agree universal standards to enhance its adoption. New speeds of 1gps and 7gps hold the promise of video streaming and direct communication between all enabled devices.

It is a stepping stone on the way to augmented reality and the 'net of things. Becoming more visible from next year.

World of sensors

What will RFID mean? Is it a wave of machine to machine communication, though this is discounted as too expensive, especially in the short-term. The alternative is machine to object communication, according to Mark Roberti, editor of RFID Journal: 

The costs associated with requiring machine devices to actively transmit data about their status back to another machine (power, broadcast, etc.) will likely limit the deployment of that type of communication to contexts where fluctuations in data are extremely valuable in-and-of themselves. Using low-cost transponders to passively monitor changes in the status of objects will become far more common and important, Roberti argues.

This is all part of the internet of things, though on this plan, we will live in a world of sensors.

Latest data transmission is 26 terabytes per second, the equivalent of 700 DVDs. Not all the time in the world would be sufficient to watch that many. For the engineers, such sppeds are now possible, and the breakdown starts at the receiving end:

As no electronic processing methods are available for a data rate of 26 terabits per second, the team uses purely optical calculation in order to break down the high data rate to smaller bit rates that can then be processed electrically.

Casual computing is here

A systematic review of technology trends can prove useful or harmful. It depends upon its quotient of BS. At first glance, this Forrester survey of the 'Post-PC' era sounds clunky, quite the opposite of the world its describing. The descriptive also sounds fuzzy:

The research firm defines Post PC as, "a social and technological phenomenon in which computing experiences become ubiquitous, casual, intimate, and physical."

But approaching computer trends from the perspective of the user fits here; the four aspects of this trend are more understandable when compared with the specially fitted desk, nightmare wires and one half of Tower Bridge that glowered beneath your feet or by your side as you booted up.

Right now, we have complete access, 24-7, and we touch screens for our apphazard lives. So far we have casual, but we have not yet reached ubiquitous, intimate or physical (when we reach fyborg, then cyborg)....

Monetize the crowd

Where does the conversation lead? What does the Cluetrain Manifesto look like these days? The answer is profit paradise for the chosen few and a graveyard of failed business models for the many. In the days when we are beginning to see another bubble in net companies, what do reviews of successes and failures tell us.

Probably that the Holy Grail remains difficult to grasp. Three simple words "monetize the crowd!" can be extraordinarily difficult to achieve. Attaining a critical mass for a participatory network is an Everest; making money from it, even harder work. The article in Strategy and Business outlines some commonalities, but cannot really explain profitable success beyond the "wisdom of crowds". Voluntary participation as a collective enterprise is necessary but not sufficient; and the leverage required depends upon the market niche.

You may wish to monetize the crowd, but that depends upon parting an individual from their cash. The first is yet one more technique to achieve the second. 

Turning the lights on dark networks

An interesting correlation between the Deep Web (also known as the Dark Web) and the "unlit social graph". The author draws parallels between Google's need  to dive beneath the surface of the world wide web to map ringfenced sources of information with Facebook's current dilemma that the majority of networks remain beyond its grasp. Truly, this unlit graphic is only available through mobiles rather than the desk. 

Quite staggering is the size of the dark web to the surface web: an estimate in 2008 was 400% of that which is searchable. The size and depth of this subterranean empire remains opaque. Add in language and culture: suddenly the Surface Web of the West may become a very small place.

Now the attention is turning to dark networks.