O'Reilly Media's Tim O'Reilly talks about "Web Squared" the theme of this year's Web 2.0 conference. In fact, before I continue on to the next datapoint, I'd like to link to his blogpost "He not busy being born is busy dying" and then the PSD blog, where the following point is made:
To summarize, the key tenet of the Web Squared era is: “the Web is now the world”. Thanks to the increased ability to process ever growing amounts of digital data that have a relationship to real world objects (the world’s “information shadow”), the Web is “in a collision course with the physical world”: our cameras, and microphones are becoming “the eyes and ears of the Web”, our GPS its sense of location and our sensors its sense of position. The Web is a baby that is growing up and becoming increasingly sophisticated in its understanding of the various inputs provided by humans: as a result “we are all its collective parents”.
Interestingly, it is O’Reilly himself who now calls for applications of Web Squared to solve real-world problems: from energy to health care. So, here’s an initial attempt at looking through the crystal ball and anticipate what a Development Squared world might look like
And finally, Goldman Sach's Mary Meeker has just released her 2009 Economy & Internet trends presentation at the same summit. Her take? The big thing is the Mobile Internet. In fact, the three keywords emphasized here are Social, Mobile and Web.
Hmmm.
So, where's the BoP in this Venn Diagram of where the mobile and the social and the web intersect? In fact, from what Guilio writes on the PSD blog, it comes under Development 2.0. While that has great value, and the need for the Web to tackle the world's problem's is a great call for action, Ms. Meeker's presentation is still primarily oriented towards the iPhone flash loving crowd.
There's another, seemingly overlooked, not mentioned by O'Reilly or Meeker or other MSM giants of Web 2.0—a trend that has been gathering momentum over the past 5 or so years. And that's one which, IMHO, seems to embody the principles of Web 2.0 in a very fundamental way—open, collaborative, accessible and most importantly, appropriate. I refer to work such as Ushahidi, FrontlineSMS and its health and financial arms, Nokia's LifeTools, Google's "Farmer's Friend" and the hundreds of local efforts to bridge the digital divide via the ubiquitious GSM mobile phone or the last mile between the Internet and the people. ICT4D means something very real to everyone I know who is involved with it, in one way or another. And with each day and every initiative, an internetworked worldwide web of humanity is developing further and reaching more people than ever before.
This mobile web
is not dead. It has just been born.
It's one that, whether people are aware of it or not, embodies what CK Prahalad
said last year,
But, I think that growth opportunity is there, as the cell phones have demonstrated. Also, it is changing the asymmetry of information, be it the farmer, who can now get prices, weather conditions, or someone who can make small transactions with SMS messaging, suddenly the asymmetry of information which is the essence of poverty — that is why people are poor, they don't have access to information — that is changing very, very dramatically. What is happening in the cell phone industry, three billion people are connected for the first time in human history, I think it will be four billion soon. That I think gives me tremendous confidence that we can really take Bill's idea and see it through to its logical conclusion, which, for me, is how to democratize commerce.
Why should we stop at democratizing commerce, when we've already begun to democratize finance and healthcare and information?
But that's a side note, just to demonstrate that what's happening so visibly over mainstream channels of information online—the convergence of the social, the Web and the mobile—is happening on the other end of the social and economic pyramid as well, albeit on Nokias and not the iPhone. And when you balance 1.2 billion on one hand with around 5.5 billion on the other, perhaps its time to look at ways to knit the two together. Or will we wait until its too big to ignore and then there's another digital divide to cross?
As O'Reilly quotes Sara Lloyd of Pan Macmillan who was referencing the future of publishing:
"The new thing is never as good as the old thing, at least right now. Soon, the new thing will be better than the old will be. But if you wait until then it’s going to be too late."
