Amish Power

This is the first time I've ever heard anyone refer to the Amish as "early technology adopters". But that’s what this NPR Radio segment calls them. I've been to the area of Ohio where this Amish community resides several times. I have been in the furniture stores that are lit by electric light bulbs connected to large, probably deep cycle, batteries. I didn't realize that they could be recharging them with solar panels. I admire their slower pace of life and their contemplative approach to technology. But, I still can't help to think that there is quite a bit of hypocrisy in their methods. I think it is great that they are conservative power users and that they are using clean, solar power. Have they ever thought how those solar panels are made? They would never use the technology that it takes to make them, so how is it right to use them? To me, this is just proof that you can't always expect logic and rational thought to explain why things are the way they are in the world.

Technorati Tags:
Amish, solar+power, early+adopters

Teach Me, Google

Folks with an MBA might be familiar with PEST (Political, Economic, Social, Technological) analysis. The futurist crowd typically uses STEEP (Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, Political) analysis. Google shows once again that they are ahead of the crowd with PESTEL (Political, Economical, Sociocultural, Technological, Environmental, Legal) analysis. See slide 13 of this Strategic Analysis: Google presentation to see where I got this from. The addition of the legal frame makes a lot of sense given the litigious nature today’s copyright and intellectual property (IP) landscape. I’ve written before about increasing court battles over IP. It is my concern that court battles will stifle rather than stimulate innovation in America. In the past IP protection encouraged innovation because people knew that they would benefit from their hard work and that a competitor with larger resources could not take their idea and profit from it. Digitization and the Internet have changed the rules of the game. While Americans argue in court the rest of the world, not under the jurisdiction of American courts, will move right ahead inventing and making things. The United States only accounts for approximately 300 million of the 6 billion people with purchasing power on this earth. While the U.S. has been the wealthiest population in the world this too is changing. If you don’t believe me check out the numbers in Shift Happens.

Technorati Tags: Google, PESTEL, intellectual property

The Global Nature of Shutters

I’ll have to keep this brief tonight. It’s getting late now that I have helped clean up the house for the Pampered Chef party that my wife is having tomorrow and helped unload a shipment of shutters that my wife received in for her home-based business, V2K Window Décor and More. The interesting thing about this evening was the packaging that the shutters came in. The Sunland Shutters were manufactured by TA CHEN International, Inc. in Davenport, Florida. They were shipped to us in Greensburg, Pennsylvania on a paperboard pallet made by JIING SHIN ENTERPRISE Co., LTD in Taiwan. How’s that for a global economy?

Technorati Tags: Cindy Anderson, shutters, packaging

Shades of Green

I came across two contrasting views of what it means to be environmentally conscious. Ashley Menger is trying a personal experiment. She is attempting to not create any trash for two weeks. You can check on her progress on her blog, Trash Talk. In contrast, Seth Godin posted on his blog today that asking people to deprive themselves is not a workable solution. Seth’s advice, "let's figure out how to turn this into a battle to do more, not less." It's hard to pick sides.

I like Ashley's approach. I think we are way too wasteful. I can recall the guilt I felt recently when I went with my wife and my son to Chick-fil-a. When we were finished with a couple of chicken sandwiches, fries, and drinks I had a whole mountain of trash on my tray. All I could do was say, "More for the landfill," as I dumped it down the whole. What if there was a way to recycle it? Sometimes I think recycling is energy intensive. You make a package, transport the package, fill a package, ship the finished product, take it home, possibly rinse it out with hot water, transport it to a processing facility, then energy has to be used to break it down so it can be used again. This seems like an awful lot for a thin plastic container. It seems like it would be much better to just produce less waste.

Then there is Seth's view. Whether his way is the right thing or not for the planet he’s probably right. The majority of people aren't going to give anything up. I found some soundbites and commentary on a recent speech made by Arnold Schwarzenegger at the Radical Congruency blog. I like Arnold's approach. Perhaps what he is doing right now (using fuel cells and biofuels) isn’t the best long-term solution. But, it's the best that technology currently has to offer. I like that he pushing people to come up with new ideas to solve our environmental issues. We can’t go back, we can only go forward.

Technorati Tags: environment, Ashley Menger, Seth Godin, Chick-fil-a, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Radical Congruency, Fuel Cells, biofuel

Holographic Storage Now Available

Holographic storage is something that I mentioned back in January. It will finally be commercially available for Early Adopters this fall. It will be interesting to watch this development and see if advances in optical storage will parallel the advances in magnetic storage as detailed by in the book, The Innovators Dilemma. I have watched it progress from CD-R to CD-RW to DVD-RW to HD-DVD and Blu-ray (and all the steps in between). It will be interesting to see if holographic storage will Cross the Chasm and be used by Pragmatists.

Technorati Tags: Holographic Storage, Crossing The Chasm, Innovators Dilemma, Early Adopters, Pragmatists, Technology Adoption Lifecycle

Semantic Web Dead Before Being Born

I found this story in my RSS feed from webpronews.com this morning. It goes even further than my previous posting. Rather than Semantic Web just being a long way off Mor Naaman, a Semantic Web developer, says that it is not likely to happen. I won’t be that pessimistic. But I will say that the Semantic Web will not likely be what we believe it will be today. I can think back in my personal experience to 1995. This is when I read Neuromancer because Mark Pesce said that it was his inspiration for creating VRML. I jumped on it, but the rest of the world wasn’t ready. VRML never took off. But today we have Second Life. Second Life didn’t start until 2003. The graphics are much better, though, than anything I saw in VRML back in the day. I heard an interview the other day on the BBC World Service with the author of The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb. He claimed that Google is a Black Swan. Basically, he claims that nobody could have predicted that Google would be what it is today. So then you might say, "Why should I believe anything a Futurist says?" Because good Futurists don’t claim to predict the future. We only claim that based on a set of assumptions a certain scenario is probable. Also, a good futurist doesn’t create only one scenario, we make three or four. The real future will most likely have elements from all the scenarios.

Technorati Tags: Semantic Web, Mor Naaman, Neuromancer, Mark Pesce, VRML, Second Life, Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Google, Futurist, scenarios

Will Semantic Web Be Web 3.0?

I have been a user of the World Wide Web since it began, when Mosaic was the only graphical web browser. I have followed its development all along the way. I honestly can’t recall anyone predicting Web 2.0. I also don’t believe that Web 2.0 is really any different than previous web activity or even pre-web networked computer activity. What we are doing hasn’t changed, how we are doing it has. New technology has permitted new software applications, that’s all. Ajax and Mashups are making new applications easier to create. But, back to the question stated in the subject, I don’t believe that Semantic Web is next.

Access to information from a cellphone will form the next wave. Cellphones are becoming/replacing PC’s with their power and significance. Mobile Web is what’s next. If you want to make money in the short-term with a web application, make it mobile. If you have long-term vision and long-term financing create the Semantic Web.

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Semantic Web, Web 2.0, Web 3.0, Mobile Web

Keep On Blogging

You might have noticed that my blogging over the past couple weeks has been a little sparse. This is because I allowed something that someone said to poison my mind. I don’t feel at liberty to talk about the exact circumstances at this point, but I’ll just say that I am over it now. Thankfully, it was nothing as severe as what happened to Kathy Sierra. My fears concerned financial harm, not physical harm. But, something occurred yesterday caused a shift in my consciousness and helped me realize the things that are really important. Writing this blog is something that I really enjoy and I am thankful for the response that I have received from readers through email and comments. I promise that I will not let this happen again.

Technorati Tags: Kathy Sierra, blogging

Happy Cinco de Mayo, Maybe

Yesterday was May 5th, or to some it was Cinco de Mayo. I thought it was funny when I asked my father-in-law what he was going to do for Cinco de Mayo and he asked, "What's that?" When I told him he replied with something of a sneer. My mother-in-law and father-in-law like to go out to eat a lot. I thought they would be game for a special at a Mexican restaurant on Cinco de Mayo. But, my father-in-law was not interested. Later that day I talked to my father on the phone. When I wished my father a happy Cinco de Mayo he just sneered. In the afternoon I watched a lecture by Wade Clark Roof on TV. He was talking about Generation X’s relationship with religion. Part of his lecture focused on pointing out the differences between Gen-X and the Baby Boomers. There are definitely differences between the generations. Something as trivial as an attitude toward Cinco de Mayo made this evident to me. Honestly, I could care less about the significance of Cinco de Mayo. To me and my friends who are Gen-Xers, Cinco de Mayo is a day to act a little silly by actually pretending like you care that it is Cinco de Mayo and to say something in a foreign language that we only know a few words of. Most importantly it’s a day to eat some Mexican-style food. A friend of mine told me how to make taquitos. I made them for the first time yesterday. My wife and I had fun eating them. The phrase, "South of the Border", always makes me think of getting a little crazy and having some fun. Baby Boomers (at least the ones I know best), on the other hand, seem to have negative feelings about Mexico. This negativity seems to prevent them from even allowing themselves to enjoy a dinner at a Mexican restaurant. It makes me wonder what meme exists within their generation to create these feelings. Many Boomers are bitter over Mexican immigration. I suppose that could have something to do with it. While something different does need to be done about immigration I didn’t let it stand in the way of me having a good time.

Technorati Tags: Cinco de Mayo, Wade Clark Roof, Baby Boomers, Generation X