November 1, 2005

Richer Rural India

A new prosperity is sprouting in rural India, with tens of millions entering the pressure-cooker-and-television-owning class and tens of thousands becoming sippers of Scotch, owners of premium tractors and drivers of multiple sedans.

The opening of this new frontier of consumer demand from 700 million people could tip India’s role in the global economy from seller to buyer, from a vendor of outsourced skills to a source of consumers for the world’s wares. Multinational corporations, from Coca-Cola to Nokia, appear increasingly keen to understand Indian villagers.
…
In 1990, for every $100 earned by an Indian villager, an urbanite made $82 more. Today, the difference has dropped to $56.

Yet the new rural riches are far from ending poverty. In India, 390 million people still live on $1 a day or less.

What is changing is the nature of the rich-poor divide. That divide was once synonymous with the urban-rural split. The only way to get rich was to live in town, and to reside in the country was to be bound to interminable poverty.

Web 2.0 as Global SOA?

Dion Hinchcliffe writes:

Are we heading towards an architectural singularity in the software industry? Sometimes it looks that way. If you do a superficial comparison at least, Web 2.0 is all about autonomous, distributed services, remixability, and is fraught with ownership and boundary/control issues. And yet, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is all about, you guessed it, autonomous, distributed services, composite functionality, and is fraught with ownership and boundary/control issues. Sound similar, no?

It does seem that we have a classic case of fractal architecture on our hands. Is Web 2.0 actually the most massive instance possible of service-oriented architecture, realized on a worldwide scale and sprawling across the Web? The answer folks is, apparently so.

I’ve been thinking about this carefully for several weeks now as the similarities seemed to inexorably call to each other as I worked with each of them in turn (disclaimer: I’m a SOA architect by trade). Both Web 2.0 and SOA are already slippery, nebulous concepts yet there are unmistakable patterns within each that actually are very tightly related, though wrapped in slightly different cloth. Each encourages the liberation of the underlying functionality of software systems by providing open access to everyone that needs it. Both warmly embrace Web services and the aggregation of existing functionality into new solutions. And Web 2.0, according to O’Reilly, looks at Data as Next Intel Inside, making large, back-end database driven functionality a core competency. SOA totally gets this as well. And both Web 2.0 and SOA provide the building blocks for creating people-centric processes starting at the scale of an organization and going up.

Peter Rip adds:

Computing architectures and social impact are separable concepts. While computing informs social interaction, and vice versa, to define a Web 2.0 app by its reliance upon or enablement of the users seems to politicize technology. The PC gave computing independence to the worker, but “personal empowerment” wasn’t an attribute to define what was a PC app and what wasn’t. PC apps ran on PCs – by definition.

Dion’s post does an excellent job of really placing Web 2.0 technologies into a larger technological context, without the user consequences being part of the definition. He does a much more articulate job of saying what I have been thinking for a while. Web 2.0 is a lighter weight version of SOA. RSS/REST is the new EAI.

Web 2.0 Business Models

Umair Haque writes:

Despite a lot of skepticism, it’s not that we don’t have business models – we do. The market has validated, in fact, at least several different kinds: advertising (Google), transactions (eBay, iTunes), subscriptions (WSJ, NYTSelect..just kidding), metered use (Skype).

I think the problem is the opposite: the success of these models is limiting everyone’s collective vision, by letting them largely ignore to the potential of new ones.

What’s different about Web 2.0 is that lightweight technologies and convergence on multiple levels create huge new opportunities for hugely cool new business models.

Mobile as Remote Control for Life

MSNBC has an AP story:

Forget voice calls. They’re oh so retro. That cell phone in your pocket is well on its way to becoming a remote control for your life.

“Smart” handsets are already being used by busy executives to retrieve important documents from office computers halfway across the globe. They’re handling e-mail, programming set-top boxes and keeping an eye on the home surveillance system.

Tourists lost in some foreign capitals can now, with a GPS-equipped cell phone, get their bearings using on-screen maps. Commuters crossing town can tap into the same tools to avoid traffic jams and reroute in mid-journey. Millions of Japanese already use their handsets as digital wallets.

“The phone is rapidly becoming a window to the world,” said Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group research firm. “In many ways it’s becoming a replacement for the PC.”

Big and Small TV

The New York Times writes:

Technology tends to shrink. Hulking mainframes begat slim laptops; boxy mobile phones and digital cameras have dematerialized into silvery credit cards. But something curious is happening to television: it’s simultaneously growing gigantic and minuscule, stretching across living room walls at the same time it slips into pockets. People can brag about their 60-inch plasma screens and their palm-size nanocasters in the same breath.

For now, television may still mostly be a medium-size medium. Plenty of bedrooms and doctors’ offices still have 20-inch sets – and depending on picture quality and where the viewer sits, those screens can be impressively clear. But there is a growing fetish for televisions on the far ends of the size spectrum. Huge, crystalline displays, once the province of wealthy A/V geeks and Hollywood executives, have dropped so far in price that they are within reach of everyday people. And the same audience can buy televisions the size of candy bars. The newest Apple iPods can be loaded with television shows, and nearly every major cellphone carrier is building television capability (live broadcasts, on-demand programming, or both) into its devices, hoping that Americans will embrace the feature the way they did the cameras planted in phones a few years ago.

TECH TALK: Vision and Worries: Work-Life Balance

I spoke that evening about three worries. I will start by sharing those. And then, I want to discuss more on The Big Worry.

The first worry I spoke about was maintaining a work-life balance. Funnily, I never thought about this in my life until recently. For the most part, my life has been all about work from the time I wake up till I go to sleep. I enjoy work so treating at as a continuum only interrupted by periodic sleep has never been a problem.

Life has changed completely after Abhisheks birth just over six months ago. Abhishek, born after over 11 years of marriage, is a disruptive innovation. The first two months after this birth, he was at my wifes parents place so I didnt think about change much. When Bhavana (my wife) and he returned to our home, I had to make some dramatic changes. And it wasnt easy.

For some time, I tried to have the best of all worlds. Play with him and work, at times both simultaneously. As she has done so often, Bhavana changed my perspective. One evening, with some emails to be answered, I was sitting on the computer instead of attending to Abhishek. Bhavana then said to me, Its fine if you dont want to help in bringing him up. If your work is more important, go ahead. Just tell me clearly and I will never ask you again. I am fully capable of raising him on my own.

The words hurt. And they continue to resonate in my ears. I had in front of me the child we had waited for so long. And here I was, thinking not of him, but of some emails that should have been answered during office hours or could so easily wait till tomorrow. The problem was my attitude. I had never bothered to make my personal life efficient. Suddenly, my actual work hours had changed from 7-10 to 10-7 (7 am-10 pm to 10 am-7 pm). All along, I just went along with enough slack in my life getting things done eventually. Now, with Abhishek in my life, that slack had disappeared. I had to make choices. Did I want to help raise Abhishek or did I want to continue my work life like before?

The answer is completely obvious. But I had not seen the reality till Bhavana put it in front of me that evening. I had to bring about change in my work life rapidly. Since that day, I have tried to. I now realize the importance of priorities. Earlier, Id essentially try and get everything done (whether I needed to or not) since I had an infinite pool of time. Now, I need to become efficient and focused. I have started in that direction, but I worry that I am not doing so fast enough.

Abhishek is a start-up where I will get no second chances. Waking up with him every morning shortly after 5 am is one of lifes delights now. I try and get home before he goes to sleep around 8 pm. I have limited my travel so I can spend more time with him. I worry less about the unanswered emails. I delegate more now and get less into details. The time with Abhishek also helps me think better as I try and imagine the world he will grow up in. I have started to build a balance between work and personal lives there will be inevitable overlaps, but I am now much more ready to address those situations.

For good measure, here is a post by Brad Feld on the same topic.

Tomorrow: Talent

Continue reading TECH TALK: Vision and Worries: Work-Life Balance