Thinking Ahead

In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, Sgura Ivude wrote “New York City Seeks Twitter Guru.” This was an interesting look at how a major city government sees the value in building new ways and means of communicating effectively with its residents by use of social media and the web.

This is an impressive change in the mind-set of how a city government will work to talk to citizens. NY is moving from the standard means of newspapers, television and meetings to see how to involve more people in how the city is working. This really could begin a trend in merging traditional communications presence. More importantly the city will spend money to create a JOB to manage it.

This is a huge shift,; going from a “Hey, do this on the side” to “This is your job.” If this trend continues, all the technology and trappings of coolness have finally paid off, moving from a side show to a main vocation and from the world of Pet Rocks to real honest expectations for result.

I was not sure we would see this begin for another 5 years, but the mindset of Digital Natives is finally beginning to replace the mindset of the Boomers.

Pet Rocks indeed….

In an article published on May 22nd by Vivek Wadhwa in TechCrunch there was a review of an initiative here in the U.S.A. called the Open Government Initiative. No this isn’t typical press talking about a more open and transparent government, which we all know is not possible. This is a new initiative by an increasingly technical savvy U.S. Government to move to a means to create applications in an open standards based format using off-the-shelf Application Programming Interfaces (API’s). The reasons to do this are many fold, they range from the basic shock that even the U.S. Government has understood that open API’s are cost effective and allow rapid development of applications for government groups (ranging from public safety to legislative to military). Amazingly there seems to be the sheer understanding that in order to allow cross department communications this is the most effective way to work. The results speak for themselves in showing a demonstrated speed of development of applications by many external sources. Moving from the past of long development time for small groups, these open API development applications are the future of cost effective, rapid development.

It is particularly upsetting that the Government who is known for slow use of technology has jumped into the lead of producing large numbers of cross platform applications. We in the telecom industry for almost 5 years have talked about using IP Multimedia Subsystems (IMS) to change to an open platform for development of applications. Talked about, but never really changed.

IMS is one of the right ways forward, but the industry must do a better job in opening up the ability to create applications to initiate growth. This will help to avoid a catastrophic shift where another standard rises to take its place, leaving the telecom industry behind. When this happens, the end-of-times for the telecom industry will be at hand.

We must find a way to promote open development of applications, but we have been pushing the IMS platform so long that the main message of open source capability is forgotten. Aside from promoting open use of the standard API’s to develop applications, we should perhaps take a tried-and-true marketing idea and rename IMS to an acronym that has less initial negative reaction. But sadly here in the U.S. the acronym IRS is already taken.

In the 1990s, I played in a rock band that toured the U.S. and Canada, and I witnessed first-hand how a road manager handles all the things that have to happen in order for a group of musicians to entertain an audience for two hours a night.

This was before mobile telephony was practical enough for cross-country travel. So tour managers spent every waking hour talking on the phone – or trying to get to one – in order to secure commitments from promoters (everything from the number of microphones on stage to where the band can shower), arrange payment of invoices, track down replacement gear … you get the idea.

They also hauled bags filled with manila folders that were, in turn, stuffed with receipts, contracts, payout records – you name it.

I met up with Grammy Award-winning rock group Los Lonely Boys during a recent tour of the U.S. to find out how mobile broadband has changed the way concert production is managed from the band’s side. It was amazing how things have improved.

Small- to medium-sized businesses like Los Lonely Boys are showing that there are limitless ways broadband can be used to tackle unique business problems. In how many other ways has small-business ingenuity put mobile broadband to work?

According to Wikipedia, The Interstate Highway System (or simply the Interstate) has been called the Greatest Public Works Project in US History. From the day President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, the Interstate has been a part of our culture—as construction projects, as transportation in our daily lives, and as an integral part of the American way of life. Every citizen has been touched by it, if not directly as motorists, then indirectly AS every physical item purchased in the last fifty years has been on the Interstate at some point in time.

Telecommunications today plays an essential role in the daily lives of practically every person in America. It is central to society as well as fundamental to the country's economy and increasingly important to the environment. Supported by a favorable regulatory environment, mobile has become a ubiquitous and affordable communications service, enabling people from all parts of the country and walks of life to connect at an unprecedented level. As social activities and commerce increasingly move from the physical to a virtual world, broadband communications is rapidly becoming this century's Interstate. Given the growing importance of broadband to the future of America, the federal government wants to accelerate the development of broadband as a new national infrastructure similar to the way the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 drove the development of the Interstate.

The Obama administration is the first to appoint a national CTO to advise the White House on technology matters and the FCC has developed a National Broadband Plan at the behest of Congress, but the key question still facing the country's leadership is what are the policies and regulations that would best support rapid and economic deployment that also stimulates significant utilization by all citizens and businesses?

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is following a path previously followed by electricity at the turn of the century. Each technology has evolved to be ‘general purpose’ with broad adoption and high social and economic impact. Electricity arrived on the scene at the turn of the century, and computers about 1971, but North American adoption rates of 75-80% are remarkably similar for each as they approached their fourth decades of existence.

While these sorts of trends are best seen in the historical data, I believe we’re at a watershed moment looking forward for ICT evolution as a general purpose technology. General purpose technologies simply work, without special expertise, and as easily as inserting a plug into an outlet. We’re moving into a stage where massive connectivity to unlimited content will define the consumer experience, and both the connection and consumption will be simple, available, and reliable. In this future we can anticipate more adoption, innovation, and visible improvement in the social and economic arenas.

Can you imagine a world where you didn’t need to know what OS your device was running? Or where you didn’t need to configure your wireless network? What other technology hurdles need to disappear to make information and communication technology fade into the background permanently?