Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Will the little guys win (a little)?
[From Sadagopan] Rich Karlgaard writes in Forbes on Three Trends for 2005 - "V-blogs, cheap technology ably performing business chores and a new golden era for startups".
The Asian tsunami tragedy brought a secondary wave of v-blogs. Sites such as the Australian Waveofdestruction.org were logging 1 million unique visitors per week at the peak. The curious clicked in to watch home videos of giant waves swallowing Thai hotels. Had John F. Kennedy been murdered in this day ofv-blogs and digicams, the Zapruder film would have been uploaded within hours for the world to see. Whether that would have been good for our souls is a separate issue. The Warren Commission, however, surely would have proceeded under different pressures.
V-blogs are quite the emerging trend. Those who missed the tsunami coverage on TV as I did, and a few million who didn't, caught it on v-blogs. It was impossible not to be horrified by the sheer force of the destruction as seen on PunditGuy's blog.
Karlgaard makes a point about emerging technology shifting into the hands of everyday consumers and small-business (as opposed going in to the hands of the rich and big business). This is just as true in India but in a different way - cell-phones and computers already hold promise of revolutions for the masses, but it is proceeding by adaptation of existing technology rather than by innovation. The point discussed in greater detail by Ray Ozzie in his interview with Tom Austin of Gartner.
These days, the leading edge of technology has shifted into the hands of the consumer and small business-person, in the form of the TiVo, the iPod, and even the software they download and use.
The people in one camp buy their computers pre-loaded from Dell. They download what they need. They don't worry about expensive, complex things like VPNs. They grab tools that say they solve problems they have. They use them, deal with spam and viruses in various ways and they get their jobs done.
In the other camp, you have enterprise architectures and well-defined processes and procedures. You're focused on issues of compliance, leverage and cost reduction. But you're years behind in the OSs that you've chosen. You've implemented lockdown, and you have intentionally limited choices in messaging and in most all forms of software.
The gap is growing; the sides are not coming together. The benefits of innovation are accruing to the little guys, not the big organizations. Many new innovations aren't burdened by things such as auditing and monitoring and enterprise controls. But they work.
The Asian tsunami tragedy brought a secondary wave of v-blogs. Sites such as the Australian Waveofdestruction.org were logging 1 million unique visitors per week at the peak. The curious clicked in to watch home videos of giant waves swallowing Thai hotels. Had John F. Kennedy been murdered in this day ofv-blogs and digicams, the Zapruder film would have been uploaded within hours for the world to see. Whether that would have been good for our souls is a separate issue. The Warren Commission, however, surely would have proceeded under different pressures.
V-blogs are quite the emerging trend. Those who missed the tsunami coverage on TV as I did, and a few million who didn't, caught it on v-blogs. It was impossible not to be horrified by the sheer force of the destruction as seen on PunditGuy's blog.
Karlgaard makes a point about emerging technology shifting into the hands of everyday consumers and small-business (as opposed going in to the hands of the rich and big business). This is just as true in India but in a different way - cell-phones and computers already hold promise of revolutions for the masses, but it is proceeding by adaptation of existing technology rather than by innovation. The point discussed in greater detail by Ray Ozzie in his interview with Tom Austin of Gartner.
These days, the leading edge of technology has shifted into the hands of the consumer and small business-person, in the form of the TiVo, the iPod, and even the software they download and use.
The people in one camp buy their computers pre-loaded from Dell. They download what they need. They don't worry about expensive, complex things like VPNs. They grab tools that say they solve problems they have. They use them, deal with spam and viruses in various ways and they get their jobs done.
In the other camp, you have enterprise architectures and well-defined processes and procedures. You're focused on issues of compliance, leverage and cost reduction. But you're years behind in the OSs that you've chosen. You've implemented lockdown, and you have intentionally limited choices in messaging and in most all forms of software.
The gap is growing; the sides are not coming together. The benefits of innovation are accruing to the little guys, not the big organizations. Many new innovations aren't burdened by things such as auditing and monitoring and enterprise controls. But they work.
