September 2011 – Looking Forward

September 27, 2011

Crowdsourcing in Michigan

I’ve been advising one of the leading local governments in the US, Oakland County, Michigan (population 1.3 million), on their next-gen government strategy. This has included co-production, which they have cleverly combined with social media.

Recently they opened up a crowdsourcing site using IdeaScale software. Their explanation of it is simple (see link below) and is intentionally set up in a way that looks like government, and not an edgy hip, website. This is the heartland of the US, after all.

Aside from the internal approvals and legalities, this was pretty straightforward to set up and I expect to see other local governments of similar size to start copying this effort.

The URL: http://oakgov.ideascale.com/

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/10724002348/crowdsourcing-in-michigan]

September 21, 2011

Beyond The Traditional Office Network

There have been several recent articles that demonstrate how the data network has escaped the confines of data centers and office buildings. When people talk about the Internet of Things, it is really about all of the various connected devices that don’t fit into the traditional mode of a personal computer or equivalent (like a smart phone).

Earlier this month, there was a story about how “Ford investigates creating a mobile data network using the cars themselves” at

http://connectedplanetonline.com/3g4g/news/ford-investigates-creating-mobile-data-network-using-cars-themselves-0810/

With every car being a node on a moving network, there are endless possibilities for new applications.

A couple of weeks ago, there was an Associated Press report about a “Tattoo-like patch breakthrough in patient monitoring” (http://yourlife.usatoday.com/health/medical/story/2011/08/Tattoo-like-patch-to-breakthrough-in-patient-monitoring/49944506/1). The mission of the researchers at University of Illinois is “really to blur the distinction between electronics and biological tissue”. The little bandaid-like patch contains an antenna so its data can be transmitted to the network.

In “Computers That You Can Wear” (http://www.pcworld.com/article/237238/computers_that_you_can_wear.html), David Daw writes about wearable computers – which are, of course, on the network. He features the Looxcie camera, Jawbone and Nike+ sensor. There was a New York Times story on Looxcie last year at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/business/07novel.html

Then there is the work by Dartmouth Professor Andrew T. Campbell’s Mobile Sensing Group, which focuses on the use of mobile phones for various kinds of sensing. It will read your eye expressions and eventually read your mind. For more information, go to http://sensorlab.cs.dartmouth.edu/ and http://sensorlab.cs.dartmouth.edu/publications.html

{http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/10479308522/beyond-the-traditional-office-network}

September 16, 2011

Netarian

From the Personal Democracy Forum, Steven Johnson of Where Good Ideas Come From, has a provocative talk about something that is neither capitalism nor communism. He calls it Netarian and proposes that the government use the network in new ways – for example, as a substitute for granting patents to drug companies.

See http://www.livestream.com/pdf2011/video?clipId=pla_cef1fa9a-bded-4155-b052-da4419872576

{http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/10273413752/netarian]

September 14, 2011

Real Jobs or Real Income?

Another part of my work on economic growth is focused on how the traditional job in the traditional large corporation is becoming a relic of the past. It came out of an industrial era in which large corporate bureaucracies were created for reasons of efficiency. See the economist Ronald Coase’s classic work on the theory of the firm.

The internet, however, has made it easier for people to collaborate in a more informal way and to create projects of great value – such as Linux and Wikipedia. I describe this as a movement from Coase to Shirky (author of Here Comes Everybody).

This role of the Internet has already begun to affect the economy. So it was with interest that there was some recent publicity on CNBC and MSNBC about the success of Thumbtack and ODesk, which help people find income on the Internet, rather than finding traditional jobs. See, for example, “Online Work Replacing Full-Time Employment: Record Unemployment, Recession Mentality Lead Companies to Alternative Hiring Strategies” at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44017638

The MSNBC interview of ODesk’s Gary Swart was frustrating to watch as he and the reporter kept talking past each other. The reporter kept saying that these were not “real jobs”. Mr Swart was diplomatic enough not to argue that those “real jobs” were no longer so real. Nor did he offer the rejoinder that many of people who use his service to identify sources of income were probably quite pleased to be able to have the flexibility that Internet work provides. These people also find they make more money than they would make at a so-called “real job” flipping burgers.

Even in an economy with traditional job unemployment measuring at anywhere from 9-18%, most Americans are concerned – perhaps not so much about “jobs”, but about the fact that their real income has gone down, even if they have a real job. Anything that boosts their income is positive and an indicator of the strategy for the future.

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/10200660202/real-jobs-or-real-income]

September 12, 2011

Pervasive Internet: “Remote Control, With a Wave of a Hand”

At some point, the data network (Internet) becomes so pervasive, it is no longer a network – in the sense of connecting nodes. It changes into something closer to what a physicist would call a field. Perhaps, a more homely analogy is that we will not be connected to the Internet, but will be swimming in it. I’m not sure that anyone sees clearly what the implications are.
© 2011 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/10122528158/pervasive-internet-remote-control-with-a-wave-of-a]
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Soon gestures may be controlling more than just games. Scientists at Microsoft Research and the University of Washington have come up with a new system that uses the human body as an antenna. The technology could one day be used to turn on lights, buy a ticket at a train station kiosk, or interact with a world of other computer applications. And no elaborate instruments would be required.

“You could walk up to a ticket-purchasing machine, stand in front and make a gesture to be able to buy your ticket"

Instead, the technology uses something that is always with us, unless we live in the wilderness: ambient electromagnetic radiation emitted as a matter of course by the wiring in households, by the power lines above homes, and by those gas pumps at the service station.

The human body produces a small signal as it interacts with this ambient electrical field. The new system employs algorithms to interpret and harness that interaction.

September 8, 2011

Are Top Government Officials Trying To Make Too Many Decisions?

One of the most popular recent articles on the New York Times website was John Tierney’s “Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?” – http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-from-decision-fatigue.html . It outlines the ideas he writes about in “Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength,” which comes out next month.

He points out how the quality of decisions declines as too many are made, in part because the decision makers have not conserved their willpower for the tough decisions.

The immediate thought is that this explains a lot about what has been happening with decisions by the Presidents/governors/mayors and their legislative bodies. Are they too suffering from decision fatigue?

In this day of total communications via the Internet is this fatigue worsening?

Or does the Internet offer a way for officials to devolve their overtaxing decision making to more citizens via the Internet?

What do you think?

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/9956534513/are-top-government-officials-trying-to-make-too-many]

September 6, 2011

Symmetrical Broadband Will Create The Real Cloud Computing

In ExtremeTech (http://www.extremetech.com/computing/94428-will-100-megabit-internet-connections-destroy-the-web-as-we-know-it), Sebastian Anthony recently asked the question: “What do you think will happen when every home is connected to the internet via 100 or 1,000Mbps Ethernet or fiber?”

He goes on to give an answer that is yes, under the assumption that the 100Mbps is symmetrical.

“At some point in the not-so-distant future, then, we’re all going to be connected to the web at LAN-like speeds — 100 megabits per second up and down — and this, just like the advent of the telephone, will change the world as we know it. … ”

“Instead of your entire life being represented by a handful of bytes in amongst Facebook’s faceless sea, symmetric connections will enable the web to become metropolitan. Your presence on the web will be your home. ”

“The end result would be a truly decentralized internet that closely mimics human settlement and society. There will still be nodes on the internet where more people congregate — the bars, clubs, and McDonalds of the real world — but for the most part, a symmetric web would let people hang out and connect with the people they care about, and ignore everyone else.”

This is my definition of real cloud computing – something way beyond the standard view which is not much more than a new marketing twist on the old time-sharing data centers.

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/9873965864/symmetrical-broadband-will-create-the-real-cloud]