Next year your entire desk will be a computer control device

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I have long said that table tops will embed video and that we will use every possible means to interact usefully with computers.

Software and device vendor ExoPC has announced EXOdesk, a computer interface that will be laid on your desk, offering digital keyboards, a variety of colorful keypads, sortable RSS feeds, and even a piano, as shown below.


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Our shrinking degrees of separation: heading down from 6 to 3

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In Chapter 1 of my 2002 book Living Networks I wrote:

When did you last say or hear someone say “what a small world”? People have an unquenchable fascination with how richly we are connected, never ceasing to be amazed by the seeming coincidences of how one friend knows another through a completely different route. Yes, it is a small world, and growing smaller all the time. The well-known phrase “six degrees of separation” suggests that we are connected to every person on the planet by no more than six steps.

After explaining the concept, its origin, and how ‘small world theory’ is helping us to understand the nature of social networks, I continued:

From six degrees, we are moving closer to four degrees of separation from anyone on in the world, with the possible exception of a few isolated tribespeople. We live embedded in an intensely connected world.

That prediction is being borne out today. A paper just submitted to arXiv titled Four Degrees of Separation, says that a study of the entire network of 721 million Facebook users with 69 billion relationship links shows an average distance of 4.74 degrees of separation.

Source: Four Degrees of Separation. Note: it = Italy; se = Sweden; itse = combination of Italy and Sweden; us = USA; fb = all Facebook.
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Tear the walls down: Jericho and the future of enterprise tech

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Yesterday I gave the keynote on The Future of Information Technology at the Local Government IT2011 conference in Coffs Harbour, which this year had the theme of mobility.

Given the ambitious scope of my keynote title, I covered a lot of territory including fundamental technology shifts and the evolving shape of organizational technology. In looking at how to respond to the forces of the ‘consumerization’ of IT, power to the user, and mobility I raised the ideas put forward by the Jericho Forum. I asked for a show of hands, and no-one had heard of it, which I hope is not representative.

Jericho Forum, as the name implies, is intent on bringinging down the walls that surrounds enterprise technology. The key concept is “de-perimeterization“, which is basically a multi-syllabic way of saying tear down the walls. In a world in which users are anywhere, connecting from any device, it is crazy to try to put up and defend walls. The boundaries of organizations are blurring beyond recognition, which I and others have been saying for over a decade, so it is completely dysfunctional for technology to try to maintain boundaries. As Jericho Forum puts it:
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[VIDEO] The flow of Twitter around the world

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Twitter has created a nice video showing how much and when the unique moment of 11:11 on 11.11.11 was mentioned around the world last Friday, as below. They describe it:

This clip is a visualization of all the Tweets mentioning 11:11 on 11.11.11. Each “1” is a location that moves with the conversation on Twitter. Their scale varies depending on the volume of Tweets posted from the location they represent. You can see the main wave move from right to left, and then a second one that occurred at 11 p.m. around the world.


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Latest data: Retailers shift to social media and online

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I am at a media briefiing by cloud-based ERP provider NetSuite at the very nice Quay restaurant in Sydney.

In addition to the interesting presentation by CEO Zach Nelson on the state of NetSuite, we have been given no less than 7 press releases, so a big news day for the company. One of these was the key findings from Frost & Sullivan of Australian retailers, conducted in October 2011. This includes a survey of the use of social media by retailers, showing:
– 34% monitor conversations on social media
– 29% use social media to promote their store
– 20% advertise on Facebook
– 17% use social media to publicize special offers or discounts
– 16% provide services to customers on social media
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The liberation of music for consumers and musicians

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At the Canon CIO event I spoke at last week, jazz trumpeter extraordinaire James Morrison and his band played music through the event.

James also gave a brief presentation on the event’s theme of the future. He said that not so long ago music was not chosen by consumers, but pushed on us by record companies, who selected artists and controlled radio airplay. Only those musicians who fitted established criteria of attractiveness, age, music style, and so on had any chance of being heard.

Fortunately things have changed. He gave the example of Andy McKee, who is not highly attractive, can’t sing, and is a solo guitar player. McKee and many, many other musicians, have reached out to listeners directly. His YouTube videos have been seen by tens of millions of people. His revenue now includes performing, a record deal, ads on the YouTube videos, and keen demand for the guitar tablature for his songs. Just a decade ago he probably never would have had an audience beyond the local cafe.


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5 facets of employees’ increasing technology expectations

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Earlier this week I spoke at an excellent event organized by Canon for the CIOs of major organizations. During an extended lunch, a diverse range of ‘celebrities’ including TV personalities, authors, and musicians gave short presentations. I spoke about how the evolving intersection of technology and society is shaping employees’ expectations, particularly in the technology they can use. I wove a broader story about social change and its implications, though I briefly brought out five points on what employees expect from technology.

1. Excellence.
When people go into organizations, they have extremely high expectations of the technology they are given to use. This has been honed by extensive use of intuitive, responsive, flexible consumer technologies, and the reasonable view that organizations should be able to provide technologies that are at least as good as those consumers have access to.
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Humanoid robots get better, walk, run, hop, and help around the house

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Honda, better known for its cars, has just released a new version of its Asimo humanoid robot, as shown below. It can run at a good pace, hop on one foot, and unscrew bottle caps and pour drinks.


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How governments research and communicate about the future

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Governments around the world are increasingly recognizing that they have a responsibility for structured thought and research about the future, both to shape their own initiatives, and to assist companies and institutions in the nation to survive and thrive in times of change.

Examples of government futures groups include:
Egypt: Center for Futures Studies
France: Centre d’Analyse Stratégique
India: Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council
Indonesia: Badan Perencanaan dan Pembangunan Nasional
Mexico: 2030 Vision
Singapore: Futures Group
Sweden: Institute for Futures Studies
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Australia’s continued rise as a global hub for crowdsourcing

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Over just the last few years, Australia has established itself as a global hub for crowdsourcing platforms. Early last year I wrote about the phenomenon, pointing to leading service marketplace Freelancer.com, which is now based out of Sydney (see my interview of its CEO Matt Barrie on Channel 7 last week), 99designs, which recently raised $35 million as the top graphic design competition platform in the world, and DesignCrowd, another top player in the space. I followed up with a post about the innovative ideas broker Ideas While You Sleep.

Now late last week, further news pointing to Australia’s rise as a global crowdsourcing hub. DesignCrowd has raised $3 million to grow the business globally, including shortly hiring 10 new people. CEO Alec Lynch says:
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