Archive for the ‘The Future’ Category
Shiny Chrome
Posted by Jamie Hutson | Filed under The Future, web 2.0
So I was going to write something about how Google is such an insanely awesome company, how their apps are great and gmail blows all other webmail out of the water, etc, etc. Then I read this post from Fred Wilson which sums up Google much better than I could have done.
Android is going to be very exciting and his point that Apple should have learned it cannot close off everything from the Mac is an excellent point. Steve Jobs just needs to loosen up his turtleneck…
In all seriousness, Chrome is a slick browser. I was knocking it earlier today with some of my friends (Dave you love it), but I’ve come around a bit. It has a way to go to steal me away from Firefox, but its engine is nasty and I see where they are going with things. Into the cloud we go..
UPDATE: Found this link about the end of the operating system: http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/9/google-s-brin-operating-systems-are-toast - worth reading
Efficiency Innovation
Posted by Jamie Hutson | Filed under Life, Start Ups, The Future
When I was in college I used to say that I wasn’t lazy but I was energy efficient. Now I’m beginning to worry that as a nation we are becoming more lazy.
Hundreds of new applications and devices are being introduced each year that reduce the effort it takes to do something, and people are waiting in throes to purchase these things. Take the new iPhone which combines the internet, elements of a notebook PC, your mp3 device and a camera. With the new version comes an app store that allows you to upgrade and add to the already potent functionality of it. Here is a device that allows you to take several unique actions and communicate quickly and easily in many different ways, connecting you to the world around you better than ever before. Think back 10 yrs to putting dimes (now quarters) in payphones.
Let’s move on to another phenomenon that’s taking early adopters by storm - Twitter. Twitter takes two already efficient mediums and combines them: email and SMS. Taking quick blurbs about our lives we can quickly share them with the people around us who want to know.
Don’t take my tone to be overly negative, these efficiency innovations go right to the heart of capitalism. Creating something that makes peoples lives better or easier. A good example, I’m writing this from my blackberry poolside, and I will email it to my posting address and it will appear automatically, with minimal extra effort.
Humans have come so far in the past 30 yrs, just in the short lifetime of many of the entrepreneurs leading these new developments. Its fascinating to see how far we’ve come and where it might lead, but it all truly comes down to effeciency innovation.
How can we take this thing we enjoy and do it better and faster? The question that defines much of what we do today.
Where is the future leading?
Posted by Jamie Hutson | Filed under Life, The Future
The future is coming at us more rapidly than ever before. A robot on Mars is having conversations with people via SMS, GPS is becoming a new way for people to connect to each other and everything seems be advancing at a frenetic pace. With all this madness, what do the people on the forefront of the technology field have to say about their predictions and outlooks.
Darren Herman began a new project called futurememe.org. The idea behind it is that “anyone can become a futurist.” I was able to be one of those anyones and posted some of my thoughts here. From the about page:
With people contributing their visions for the future from all over the globe, we can amass all of this information in one place and hopefully take action on it for positive change, be it social, technological, or economical.
The future of our world can be a scary or a wonderful place, and there are plenty of varieties for those visions. In college I got really into utopian/dystopian societies and see so many similarities in todays world to those dystopian visions of the 60’s, 70’s, and even back to the 30’s and 40’s. In Fahrenheit 451 people take heavy doses of relaxants and anti-anxiety pills and tune in every night to their “wall screens” (flat screen tvs?) where reading books is illegal and information is largely distributed in “factoids” short pieces of information devoid of context (twitter?). 1984 features new speak, where people combine words into one thats quicker to say (web log=blog), and people communicate via two way telescreens (video-conferencing). These dystopian novels of so many years ago reflect with amazing accuracy current situations.
With one notable difference, the vast majority of our current technology is a result of efficiency innovation. I don’t know how often that phrase is used but I’m coining it as one that I will be using often and reflecting on frequently. Our current level of efficiency innovation is unparralled in our history - it took 500 years to advance beyond the printing press, yet only about 100 yrs to advance from radio to tv to the internet. From records to tapes to cds to mp3’s - 30 yrs. From disk drives to dvds to solid state drives ~20 yrs. Think about where cloud computing will take us, imagine what the next Mars Rover will discover.
Its a great time to have an imagination, and an exciting time to play a part in the forefront of technology. The idea of futurememe.org gives everyone a place to share and grow their ideas of the future. I personally hope it grows and gets some of the lofty and interesting contributors Darren is seeking. The future is ours…
