Two opinions on the world that is emerging around us.
Ray Ozzie: “What’s incredibly exciting to me is that a confluence of factors e.g. ubiquitous computing, networking, web and RAD technologies, the state of the job market – in essence, loosely coupled systems and loosely coupled minds – have created what amounts to a petri dish for experimentation in systems for social network formation, management and interpersonal interaction. An exciting time to be exploring what may happen to social structures, to organizations and to society when the friction between our minds can be reduced to zero … to the point where we can truly have superconductive relationships.”
Kevin Werbach: “As distribution has gotten even cheaper, the same trends have allowed Japanese cultural artifaces such as Pokemon to dominate America. The Net gives local and independent content creators the ability to compete against the domainant corporate media, not by building walls but by leveling the playing field. And just around the corner is the greater leveler of all: ubiquitous unlicensed wireless communications.”
The one thing that is happening is that the developments of email. IM, blogs, SMS, social software is allowing for non-linear relationships – both in personal lives as well as in business. This translates into a 10x increase in the transactions that we are now doing daily as compared to a decade ago. This is the opportunity for software – how to help us manage this exponential increase in what we individually have to track and manage. Think of it as Moore’s Law applied to our personal lives.
