The Awakening Global Brain
by Ray Hammond
Through search engine interfaces such as Google, the internet has started to display early signs of an emerging intelligence. As search becomes more predictive, more tailored to our own search patterns and intentions, it will draw on indicators from billions of other searches (and their implicit intentions) to meet our individual needs more promptly and more fully. I believe that glimmerings of a primitive global intelligence can already be discerned.
But in considering such new trends, we futurologists (and business managers who have to create strategies for the future) hit a stumbling block which always frustrates any attempt to peer meaningfully into the crystal ball: we have no language for the future. As a result, we lack the words necessary for us to think constructively about the vast and rapid changes now occurring across the globalized, technology-driven business landscape.
It has always been so. Examples from recent history illustrate our continuing paucity of words and phrases with which to describe the new. When the image projector was first invented we could only describe it by its startling behaviour and by reference to an existing technology. We called it ‘a magic lantern.’ The railway locomotive was ‘an iron horse,’ the automobile was a ‘horseless carriage”, radio was “wireless, ” the plane was a “flying machine” and the refrigerator an ‘ice box.’ We always lack language for the technological future and where there is no language there can be no meaningful thought. As the great futurologist and science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke has pointed out, ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’
Current Developments 1 : Web 2.0.
In the autumn of 2005 the term ‘Web 2.0’ became a new meme and the internet entered a new phase. The rapid spread of high-speed broadband connections and the arrival of smart browser technology known as Ajax (asynchronous Javascript and XTML) allowed commentators to dub the new services that were on offer as heralding the start of ‘Web 2.0’, a development that has prompted some misguided and over-excitable financial writers to suggest that the ‘internet bubble is returning.’
In essence, Web 2.0 technology exploits broadband connections to integrate computing platforms (PC or mobile) and web-based technologies more closely than before. For instance, this allows a ‘web site’ to offer full word processing, spreadsheet or diary (calendar) facilities.
When a user visits a Web 2.0 word-processing web site, some word-processing functions are passed down to the accessing device and, with the advantage of broadband connection, the web service works seamlessly with the client device to provide users with a rich word-processing experience that makes it seem as if the word-processing application is actually based within the PC or mobile device itself.
There are some advantages to this approach (and considerable implications). The first advantage for a user is that word-processing facilities (and stored files) are available to any PC, laptop or mobile device which can access the web. Thus an author can begin a report while in the office and can then later access that same report (and related files) from any internet-enabled device anywhere in the world.
Equally important is the fact that, if the original author so chooses, the document can be made available to others to edit or to add to. The document is held in a ‘collaborative space’ accessible to those who are given the password. Many more ‘collaborative’ W.20 applications are now in development.
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Current Developments 2: The Mobile Revolution
Over two billion mobile phone connections have been made and more than a quarter of the world’s population are now connected to the networks! Despite this staggering figure, further explosive growth in mobile phone usage is certain. Even before new infrastructure is laid, existing cellular networks already provide potential coverage for five billion people – around 80 per cent of the world’s population.
By 2010 it is forecast that an additional one billion mobile phone connections will be made. Many of the new connections will be created in the poorest countries of the world, connections which will begin to transform their fledgling economies. In sub-Saharan African nations the annual growth rate of new mobile phone connections now exceeds 150 per cent. Meanwhile business customers and consumers in developed countries are switching to ‘broadband mobile’ networks which allow data rich, multimedia communications over permanently open connections.
As a result of this explosive growth, a new wave of virtual communications technology is sweeping over the globe. Mobile phone technology companies are rushing to offer data services while information technology companies are plunging headlong into voice technologies such as VOIP – ‘Voice over Internet Protocol’. The result is that the mobile communications world is converging with the ever growing, ever faster, ever more capable internet, and this will bring further profound change to our cultures and the way we do business. Once again technological change is shifting from the ‘incremental’ to the ‘disruptive.’
Much of this innovative drive is fuelled by the enthusiasm of users themselves for virtual communication (rather than it being a marketing-driven trend). In the UK – one of the world’s smaller but more advanced mobile markets) – a new record was created in October 2005 when 2.9 billion person-to-person texts messages were sent in a single month. That is the equivalent of 93.5 million SMS message a day (one-and-a-half messages for every person in the nation). In 2005 as a whole 32 billion text messages were sent.
Current Developments 3: The Internet Goes Mobile
Over the last decade business people have realised that the internet and web can be accessed at any time from anywhere. First they bought lap-top computers which they plugged into phone sockets at airports and in hotel rooms. Then they started to use local area wireless connections for their computers before turning to their mobile phones for email and web access. At the same time – and in parallel – people started use their mobile phones to send text messages and then download music and watch video clips. Then consumers started to take pictures and videos with their phones.
Now people have started to watch live TV on their mobile phones (delivered both by the internet and by direct TV transmissions – indeed, the Italian mobile operator Italia 3 has even bought TV broadcaster Canale 7 to provide content) and, in some countries, users are starting to store digital forms of money on these devices, turning them into electronic wallets. The phones themselves are being connected to a mobile equivalent of internet broadband – ultra fast connections which are constantly available and infinitely searchable.
Business – and society as a whole – is moving into a new electronically mediated, instantly searchable environment in which everyone will be connected permanently to everyone else, everything will be connected to everything and these connections will be super fast, low-cost, ‘always on’ and available everywhere. The implications will be profound.
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Future Developments 1: The Subscription Economy
As everything begins to talk electronically to everything else, new ways of doing business will emerge. One of the most important of these trends is a shift from today’s market economy to what I call the ‘subscription economy.’
Today many businesses continue to make products and sell them. This is the classic ‘market economy’ model of doing business.
Tomorrow, when everything is permanently connected via wired and wireless networks, companies will be able to maintain contact with their products at all times. This will allow them to switch to a subscription method of doing business.
A company which today manufacturers and sells air conditioning units will, tomorrow, become a supplier of cold air. Clients who today buy air-conditioning units and have them installed really only want to buy cold air,
they don’t really want to buy and maintain the necessary hardware.
This change will come about because the air conditioning manufacturer will be able to remain in constant contact with the cooling units that are installed. As a result the company is able to offer a service of providing ‘cold air’ on a managed basis. The air conditioning supplier contracts with the client that so much cold air will be supplied, at an agreed temperature, to cover an agreed area for so many hours per week or per month.
The air conditioning supplier uses the networks to monitor the performance of each air conditioning unit, adjusting power output and performance to precisely match the client’s demands. This system allows the cold air supplier to run remote diagnostics on all of the installed units, to carry out preventative maintenance and even to buy power for the units in the most economic fashion.
The switch from the market economy to the subscription economy is beneficial for both parties. The client gets precisely what is required – cold air – at agreed volumes and at appropriate times. The supplier gains a new form of ongoing cash flow and the opportunity to create a loyalty bond with the client. And, the best thing of all, the cold air is supplied in the most efficient way possible at the least environmental cost. The subscription model is win-win.
Future Developments 2: Intellectual Capital
As more and more of human activity migrates to the electronic domain completely new forms of corporate wealth will emerge.
Today, much of the value that is created within companies and large organizations is simply lost because it is too difficult to analyse, capture and value. Every business develops techniques, processes and knowledge about how it does what it does but this ‘process knowledge’ is currently unvalued or is, at best, loosely clumped into a category called ‘good will’.
In tomorrow’s rich network environment it will be possible to capture these processes and store the information in such a way that it may be audited and valued like any other corporate asset. The recording of these processes will produce a new form of ‘intellectual capital’ (sometimes called ‘knowledge capital’) and this emergent form of new wealth will do much to drive the continuous installation and upgrading of media-rich, fully integrated wired-and-wireless networks throughout organizations.
Future Developments 3: The Awakening Global Brain (Using Fiction to Develop Future Scenarios)
As a futurologist and novelist I use my fiction writing to create social and business scenarios set fifteen, thirty or even fifty years in the future. Although I accept that all futuristic fiction is essentially about our present view of the future rather than the future itself, fiction does provide a useful ‘laboratory’ in which to consider how humans may interact with technology in the future.
The following paragraphs are an extract from ‘Emergence,’ a novel set in the year 2015 in which I postulated that independent intelligence will emerge within in the world’s data networks. In particular I wanted to explore how we humans may interact with intelligent, human-like personalities that will become our companions (whether in physical or virtual form) and our interface to the awakening global brain. Read here.
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