XplanaZine

Transcript

Some days you wake up and it seems like there’s a quick shift in the technology universe. It’s not much of a change, but still, it’s something different. Interestingly enough, when these shifts happen, they always seem to be about corroborating a growing trend of consumer demand.

In my mind, yesterday was one of those days. I got out of bed and started scanning the daily headlines. Before I had made much headway, it was already apparent that there was something strange afoot. All kinds of breakthroughs were popping up on the headline horizons. And, in each case, what I saw was a case of a business or technology development that embraced what the public has already been voting for. In a way, each of the things I saw was a kind of affirmation that there were more than mere trends at stake here.

Here are just a few of the things I saw yesterday.

1. A Vote for Blogs — As if we needed any more evidence that blogs were here to stay, Ask Jeeves announces its purchase of the privately held Bloglines, a site for searching personal Web pages and aggregating news headlines. For Ask Jeeves, this move is an attempt to keep up with the other search giants who are already rolling out blogging strategies. For the public in general, this was a case of the business and technology worlds throwing another batch of overwhelming support behind this grassroots journaling and collaboration technology.

2. Google Goes Wild — And what a banner day for Google. In keeping with a frenzied pace of expansion, they launched Google Maps, a direct competition for MapQuest, and speculation also surfaced that they were readying a full launch of Gmail. Google, in particular, is a company that tries to give the consumer more and more of what he or she wants. And what we want most, apparently, is better information access and control.

3. Nicholas Negroponte, founder of MIT’s Media Labs, says he is developing a laptop PC that will go on sale for less than $100. His hope is that this low-priced device will become an important educational tool in developing countries. According to Negroponte, at that price, one laptop per child could be “very important to the development of not just that child but now the whole family, village and neighborhood.” This is an important announcement for education because it begins to solve the real dilemma of the technological divide in education. At less than $100 per student, we can begin thinking about reaching every student in the world with rich and valuable learning content. Again, this is a growing public need that as been expressed openly and is now being tackled directly.

4. Another headline from yesterday, but one that put a bit of a damper on my enthusiasm, was about Microsoft’s planned beta release of its Windows Longhorn this summer. For me this is a case of the consumer saying, “We don’t really want anymore,” and the company making us take it anyway. Windows has become a case of something that gets done to us rather than something that meets an openly expressed need.

And if all this weren’t enough to convince me that another subtle shift took place in the technological universe yesterday, a report came out about an effort underway to have fans foot the bill for Season 5 of Star Trek Enterprise. This is a bit eerie because I was talking just last week about viewers getting more involved in the production of TV programming, but it’s a good example of what works in business and technology.

As we become more familiar with the possibilities of the information era, we build momentum towards certain technologies and/or information tools. Smart businesses recognize those momentum trends and help us evolve accordingly.

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