By Andy Goldberg
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” The saying was coined by pioneering computer scientist Alan Kay, who followed his own maxim by being one of the first people to design a laptop and a graphical operating system, among many inventions.
Looking into the future, Kay’s maxim is worth remembering because the biggest changes that will affect the technology world have already been invented. Now they just have to spread. Mary Meeker, a legendary tech analyst turned venture capitalist, outlined the biggest disruptions in a technology talk in early December at Stanford University.
The world is in the midst of a “re-imagination of nearly everything,” Meeker said. From healthcare and education, to the way people interact with computers, process information and navigate their way around the world, the relentless march of technology is just getting started, and the pace is quickening by the day.
The biggest change in the coming years, according to Meeker, will be the widespread adoption of smartphones of all shapes and sizes. While there are already more than 1bn smartphones in use around the world, they still represent only 20% of the number of mobile phones in use. That means that some 4bn more people will upgrade to smart devices in the next few years, triggering deep changes in the integration and use of the Internet in people’s lives.
The mobile revolution combined with social networks to help foment the Arab Spring. With the fastest rates of smartphone adoption coming in places such as China and Iran, the technology could bring further challenges to authoritarian regimes, Meeker predicted.
On the consumer side, the spread of the Internet and the emergence of the ubiquitous data cloud, where information can be stored, has already altered some of the most basic forms of human services and behaviour.
The most adept users of smartphones and broadband exhibit an “asset-light” lifestyle, Meeker said. “It’s easier for people to get what they want when they want it by buying ... access to a vast range of goods and services — such as all the movies on Netflix — rather than for ownership of a particular object or title,” she explained.
Not only movies, but also music and other entertainment content are obvious examples of this new access model. Car-sharing and vacation rental schemes also fit the bill. The model even applies to ways to save time. With apps like TaskRabbit and Zaarly growing in popularity, it’s easier than ever to find people to perform personal tasks and chores.
While that may be great news for the time-challenged, the exponential growth of the mobile web is bad news for Microsoft. Windows, which once held a near monopoly in personal computers, is now a minority player. Android and Apple’s iOS now represent a combined 45% of the market for operating systems, while Windows accounts for 35%. With the number of Android and iOS devices growing by more than 1mn every day, Microsoft’s share and its influence are going to keep shrinking.
Meeker warned against thinking that this “re-imagination of nearly everything” will take a long time to play out. With the rate of adoption of new devices continuing to accelerate, she said “the magnitude of upcoming change will be stunning,” driven by a perfect storm of conditions, including “ultra-competitive markets, fearless entrepreneurs and consumers, readily available capital and low start-up costs.” But there are many things that could stand in the way of technological progress, such as political problems, social conflicts and economic crises, she warned.
“There is a lot to be excited about in tech,” Meeker said. But there is also “a lot to be worried about in other areas.” — DPA
Is social media
facing its moment of truth?
By Andy Goldberg
At the end of 2011, the biggest questions that social media mavens were debating was when Facebook would go public and for how much. It didn’t take long for them to get their answer. In February 2012, the social networking giant filed papers to go public at a valuation of $106bn, amid the kind of hoopla that hadn’t been seen since the climax of the dotcom bubble in 2000.
That was when media giant Time Warner agreed to a merger with what was then the high flying darling of the Internet, AOL, in a “deal of the century” worth a jaw-dropping $182bn. Yet the ink was hardly dry when the dotcom bubble burst turning the deal into one of the worst corporate fiascos on record.
“Fiasco” was also the word used by the Wall Street Journal to describe the fate of Facebook’s record share launch on May 18, when only the failure of the trading system and the intervention of underwriters stopped the share price falling below its launch level.
But by the end of May the stock had lost a quarter of its value, sinking to a low of $17.55 in September. The King of Social Media, the giant of the Internet with over 1bn active members, seemed to have faced its moment of truth, and been found severely wanting. Facebook was a waning fad that couldn’t possibly justify its valuation, naysayers said.
But, hopefully, long-term investors didn’t dump their stock at that juncture. Facebook has come roaring with a stronger advertising platform and new money-spinning ventures, such as a Gifts service which allows members to buy each other presents — quite a useful little trick when you have a billion birthdays on file.
Fears that users were rebelling against the ubiquity and incessant stream of social media also seem unfounded. While Facebook may not be piling on the users at the same rates it did when it was just a snappy start-up, other sites, such as Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest, are still piling on the users.
And Facebook itself is still enormously popular with the average Internet user spending 8 hours a month on the site in September, according to Nielsen. The influence of such sites is unparalleled say experts.
“Collectively, we’re creating the most valuable source of information in human history,” says Pat Kinsel, chief executive of a company called Spindle, which mines social media for information that’s relevant to specific users.
“Every day, as 300mn photos are uploaded to Facebook and 400mn tweets are shared, every person, place, event, topic, and organisation is being documented and discussed.”
If social media proved its importance as a communications tool in the Arab Spring, the huge attention it garnered during the recent conflict in Gaza reinforced how dramatically the flow of information has changed, says social media expert Dale Peskin.
The Gaza conflict “could be seen as the first Twitter war, as the combatants used the microblogging platform to disseminate their propaganda directly and in real time to millions of people around the world,” Peskin noted.
“Concurrently, civilians on both sides used Twitter to tell the world what was happening — often doing so much faster than any journalist could.”
This use of social media is no flash in the pan. The world first learned of the military operation that killed Osama bin Laden when a local Pakistani tweeted about the strange helicopters landing in his neighbourhood. “More is coming,” Peskin said in a blog posting on his site, Wemedia.com. “Technologies applied throughout the world will accelerate the democratisation of media, empowering the rest of the planet. Expect more chaos as we embrace new ways to communicate.” – DPA
