What's going to be big in the 'tens'?

The developments that shaped the last two decades in technology and beyond – namely the arrival of the web in the 90s and the rise of Google in the ‘noughties’ – began life in the previous decades. The upcoming celebration of the 20th anniversary of Tim Berners Lee’s proposal for the web (13th March 1989) illustrates the existence of the idea before the immense impact it had in the following decade and, likewise, Google’s incorporation as a company in late 1998 before its introduction of Adwords in 2000 and subsequent massive growth.

So, as we head towards the end of this decade is the technology and/or organisation that will define the ‘tens’ (or whatever else they may become known as) already in its infancy ready to burst forward or is it something that is already in wide use that takes on greater significance.

My first bet is very much on ‘the mobile web’ as really starting to define the next decade.

In contrast to the growth of the web and Google, this one has been a relatively long time in coming and there are still some barriers in place to ubiquitous adoption. But the pieces are now slotting into place – from relatively seamless mobile access via 3G and wifi to inspiring mobile devices like the iphone.

mobile_web_growth2

As I know well from my time at NTL Broadcast and Lucent, the infrastructure to build out networks capable of delivering the mobile web as an engaging experience was never going to happen overnight and it wasn’t anything as comparatively simple as finding faster ways to push data along the copper cables that the majority of our homes had anyway.

The network operators have had staggering costs to recoup – not least from the enormous licencing cost for 3rd Generation networks – so none of them was going to rush to offer low or no cost mobile web access.

Likewise, unless you are used to paying high monthly contract charges to mobile operators, I would suggest that consumers themselves aren’t going to rush to pay a lot extra to access web content on the go unless it is obviously compelling and useful and until recently the limitations of devices themselves have been a big barrier to adoption.

I was interested the other day for instance to read some of the reaction to Google’s recently launched UK Streetview. There were respondents on one blog describing how they were using it on mobile phones to help them navigate places unfamiliar to them and it was clear that being able to see landmarks and surroundings from eye level perspective as opposed to a 10,000 foot view is a compelling experience.

But up until the arrival of a truly responsive and navigatable mobile interface like the iphone, coupled with high speed mobile data access I can’t have imagined mobile phone users making such comments.

Right now, I’m personally not prepared to pay more than 30p per day to access the mobile web. This is the PAYG Sim based deal I am getting from Virgin Media/Mobile on an sim-free 3G phone (translates to £9/month for 750MB). This is a low cost way and controllable way to access many types of sites and content but as soon as you venture into any higher bandwidth service – flickr, youtube, internet radio etc then the daily cap of 25 MB is swallowed up rapidly and you can very quickly find you’re paying a whole monthly contract equivalent for less than an hour’s online entertainment. I know that other network providers are offering higher data limits on rolling monthly contracts but I personally don’t want to either pay for something that I don’t then use or get into a scenario of cancelling and restarting contracts.

It was low or no cost unlimited web access that saw the wired web become a ubiquitous resource and demonstrated to people how useful the web could be – even at dial-up speeds. We were hooked and the operators were subsequently able to recoup the losses on this with the arrival of broadband and our willingness to pay more for a better web experience. Virgin Media knows this as it had massive experience in opening up wired web access under the NTL brand but I’m not sure the main mobile network operators are really learning lessons from history here and are still trying to earn revenue from misguided ‘walled gardens of content’ and access charges that are actually holding them back now from potentially much bigger future revenue opportunities.

I think this will change quickly now and the age of the true mobile web and all the innovation it will bring will be upon us at last.

Millennials in The Lab…

Those born between 1980 and 2000 now tend to be described as Millennials following a survey in which thousands of them chose this in preference to terms such as Generation Y.

kids_textingMy eldest daughter falls into this category and it is both interesting and daunting to see her embrace communication and web technologies. She is already extremely computer literate and not fazed by the processes of creating and communicating web based content via social networks.

In my professional life I am seeing clear generational divides. The Millennials take to the content management system and processes I have been introducing into the organisation like ducks to water and want to do more and more. The Generation Xer’s are a different matter and find the idea of being empowered to publish content on the web as a daunting prospect and struggle to adapt to the technology without plenty of hand holding.

 As the web became part of job role early in my career I guess I am closer to the Millennials in terms of experiences with the web than with a typical Generation Xer – however I’m sure my daughter would disagree.

When I was taking a surf down memory lane recently I came across the Alcatel-Lucent Lab. This is an interesting resource that researches a range of technology topics with a broad cross section of younger Millennials.

Some recent research that caught my eye was a study into the iPhone user experience amongst teenagers. Unsurprisingly it shows that there is a lot right about the user interface but also that the on-screen keyboard makes texting difficult as it provides no touch indication of input. As the article observes, and as I have witnessed in the past with my nephew, many teenagers can text without looking at the screen just by their familiarisation with a keypad layout and the number of clicks to the required letter. These are skills obviously learnt in many a boring lesson or lecture 🙂

Fighting the past…

As a hardened web veteran I tend to take the view that nothing is new. For example, all the core elements of today’s massively popular social networks were seen in the first generations of business collaboration solutions back in the mid to late 90s.

Having struggled at that time to get people actively interested and empowered to create and manage web content with early content management systems, I was impressed with the speed with which collaborative solutions such as eRoom (acquired by Documentum – now owned by EMC) and IBM Quickplace (now IBM Lotus Quickr) gained user adoption.

It was all about making online communication easy, productive and useful for non-technical people.

Solutions like eRoom found their way into organisations during the 90s dotcom boom as point solutions for helping to manage communication around projects. Because users had positive experiences with these solutions their usage spread quite rapidly from the ground up and by the time the IT managers got wind of them they were too established to stop or ignore.

sharepoint_areasThis was a great business model that Microsoft latched onto subsequently with SharePoint and although its first offering in 2001 was criticised for poor usability, the 2003 release of Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 2.0 and Portal Server, where WSS was bundled in free with Windows Server, created just the effect Microsoft was looking for and SharePoint adoption spread rapidly within many organisations.

I liked the 2003 version of SharePoint for all the reasons I liked the products that were its inspiration. As a non-technical ‘power user’ it empowered me to capture information concerning projects, put some context around it and communicate that around the business in a way that encouraged and enabled feedback and engagement.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) and WSS 3.0 improved on the usability issues of the second version, added in wiki and blog capabilities and, in essence provided the toolkit to create business orientated ‘social networks’ within organisations.

So, why then, having been a long term advocate of business collaboration and also the SharePoint offering in recent years did I find myself underwhelmed and quite disappointed with SharePoint when I revisted it again recently?

A couple of days ago I signed up for the new Microsoft BPOS European trial and set about creating a sample intranet site that showcased the key capabilities available in the SharePoint solution, from document management, image libraries and team workspaces to more complex functionality using the core ‘list/form building’ capabilities. (There is a great summary of BPOS pros and cons by a former colleague of mine here)

It was during this experience that the reason Microsoft invested in Facebook became all too apparent – besides any potential for being the next big online advertising platform, Facebook  is just so much easier and pleasurable to use for doing what are essentially the same processes of building a collaborative environment as SharePoint. Added to this is morphing of social network environments into what some commentators are describing as ‘the new e-mail’.

Once again I think this illustrates the continuing challenge Microsoft has in moving on from its heritage as primarily a desktop pc software provider.

The iPhone demonstrates quite starkly how wrong Windows Mobile is and likewise, the myriad of web native solutions spawned under the moniker of ‘web 2.0’ show just how awkward and cumbersome some of the most established software solutions are when the playing field is levelled to what can be done in a web browser alone.

Having spent some time in a software development role I have some insight into the challenges presented by trying to evolve a solution into something more current and relevant. For example, changing a product that was designed primarily for managing one website in one language or allowing content to be published without workflow or a deployment process are not straightforward or quick to do if those requirements were never conceived when the product was first designed.

Multiply that by the size and complexity of the Microsoft organisation and it is no surprise that its solutions sometimes feel restrained, tired and dated compared to those not weighed down by such baggage and designed with the current platform in mind as opposed to older device and network access.

A star on Earth…

Two Bell Labs associates, Arthur L. Schawlow and Charles H. Townes are credited with the invention of the laser in the late 1950s, the feasibility of which was proposed by Einstein in 1919. The potential significance of that invention was emphasised in a BBC2 Horizon programme this week which examined the progress and future of nuclear fusion.

It was presented by Professor Brian Cox, a guy who wouldn’t look out of place in a Manchester alternative rock band, and a welcome new face to present complex scientific ideas.

nif-chamber1Amongst 4 significant fusion research projects is that of the National Ignition Facility in California which although 5 years behind schedule and way over budget is due for completion this year. Essentially it is the world’s largest laser, or rather 196 lasers all designed to fire on one spot. That spot is a fuel source which when ignited by the lasers will (it is believed) result in nuclear fusion and produce a mini star that will burn for a fraction of a second but emit energy 10-100 greater than that required to ignite it.
The other featured research projects were the Z Machine in New Mexico, the Kstar project in South Korea and JET project in Oxfordshire UK.

If nothing else, the programme brought home the scale of the challenge facing the world in addressing its exponential energy needs. A plain speaking, no nonsense US scientist explained the calculations behind the power we consume today and what would be required if every person on earth had some equality in the power they used to live their lives comfortably.

The maths showed clearly the efforts required with various energy sources to meet those needs. With wind power, for example, we would have to cover virtually our global landmass in turbines to meet such needs and we would have to start doing it today with no delay. Each second that passes takes us further from achieving the goal.

The upshot of this exercise was to illustrate that none of world’s current energy sources could provide anywhere near the future energy requirements of the world if we are to sustain our way of lives in the western world and enable those in the developing world to enjoy much better standards of living. Even nuclear fission would require us to be building many hundreds more reactors than are planned and again for us to be doing it right now not in 5, 10 or 20 years time.

The programme left its presenter and me in no doubt that fusion is the only conceivable answer right now to the world’s energy and global warming challenges and that with a concerted global effort and more support for the research done to date then it is achievable. It would certainly appear to be a case of ‘when’ not ‘if’.

The programme ended with the various fusion project leaders and observers giving their view on when fusion energy would flow into the world’s power grid. The most optimistic view was 2022 – almost in the timeframe of this blog but a more general consensus pushed it to 2030-35.

A turning point…

Another moment in history I remember well was the US election in which George W Bush became US president. I was visiting some of the main  Lucent offices in New Jersey (there were a lot of them) at the time and was in a hotel bar on the evening of the election result.

Of course you may remember that it turned into a complete non-event as the result was too close to call and resulted in a recount, some dodgy ballot papers in Florida and a legal battle before ‘W’ headed for the White House and Al Gore made an award winning film using a PowerPoint presentation.

Aside from his anger inducing rhetoric and ill-judged warmongering, ‘The Decider’ as Dubya liked to be known ‘Decided’ against some significant areas of scientific and medical research during his 8 years in charge largely it would seem due to a dangerous combination of ignorance and religious belief.

obamaBarack Obama’s arrival in the White House has been met with almost Messianic fervour in some quarters and ironically none more so than the scientific and medical communities who see a new golden age (versus the dark age the W years are already known as) before them as decisions made by the previous administration are reversed.

So – with a combination of political will and research organisations such as Bell Labs to call on I am indeed hopeful that some significant advances can be made in environmentally orientated research and development and hopefully less developments aimed at military purposes.