Proposal for the Hybrid Philanthropic-Capitalists, to Save the World

It goes without saying that the current crisis is inflicting its pain and suffering in multiple dimensions – from illness and loss of life, to the suspension of business and disruption of the world as we knew it, with hunger and displacement in between. In order to make it through, and possibly emerge stronger and more sustainably, the situation requires solutions on multiple dimensions.
We are all well aware of the health impacts and loss of life, the risks that medical professionals are taking, and the burdens on our health care system. We see the scrambling to procure PPE and ventilators, produce and distribute diagnostics, and develop antivirals and vaccines.
On the business and financial side, Federal actions have ranged from an early interest rate cut, backstopping and providing liquidity to credit markets, and the rounds thus far of payroll protection and low rate loan plans with potential forgiveness. These efforts help soften the blow and reduce immediate impact on the old normal, though don’t encourage us in necessary new directions.
Yes, it is likely that corporate America will emerge a different animal – it already is a different one. Years’ worth of change toward remote work was compressed to a month’s time, and it is likely that a significant portion of that will remain so. This has implications on commercial office space needs, commuting demands, and the geography of the services economy around them — that will no doubt persist to some extent. It is also likely to impact consumption patterns at the individual level, which changes how retail America will operate – with greater online demand and more drive-thru accommodation in our retail.
Still, without any sense as to how long our social distancing will be necessary to turn the corner on at least this wave of the crisis itself, it remains to be seen how many small businesses will have to fold rather than re-open, or re-open only to find they cannot survive what the new normal turns out to be.
What additional measures can be taken to prolong their viability, if not enable them to survive? What longer term shifts will we see as a result of this situation? And what can be re-thought/re-engineered in our re-booting of the world, in order to best capitalize on the pause we are experiencing?
At the large corporate and infrastructure end, we should valorize re-imagining/re-engineering for the re-start, those processes that are known to be impactful to the planet – from their sourcing to their byproducts and pollutants. Quick and noticeable rebounds in air and water quality, and re-emergence of wildlife, bring to the forefront the impacts we’ve had, and underscore the need to embrace changes through our recovery to retain the benefits and make further progress. And at the small company end, we should find efficiencies to provide for a more stable supply chain for tail risk. Perhaps loan forgiveness (in whole or partial) should be dependent upon shifting to use of resources that are deemed less impactful/more sustainable.
Large and well capitalized companies that are nimble enough can ramp up and down segments in which they operate, in order to manage through some of this and best capitalize on appropriate opportunities. Small companies, however, are more limited in the scope and scale of their ability to pivot and/or balance accordingly – not to mention, keeping the lights on and making payroll.
As a result, as Howard Schulz, Starbucks’ emeritus CEO discussed on April 23, 2020, millions of small businesses will have to make the decision soon as to whether they shutter their doors permanently, or can hang on. Yes, it is the American way that some things will fail, and other things will come along to replace them; and arguments will be made for letting market forces be. But these are not normal times, and in the interim, the economy, and more importantly all its lives, lie in the balance. To the extent the magnitude and amplitude of the extending waves of impact can be dampened by anything beyond our federal support, the fewer lives will be shattered, and the shorter this suffering needs to be. The cascade runs from job losses, to the elimination of goods-throughput from what would have been if they remained in operation; the real estate vacancies that will result from their shuttering; the reduction in property owner demand for related services; the commerce and tax revenue from everything along the waterfall of everyone involved, including the subsequent shuttering of downstream business.
Let this be a call to action for Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Tom Steyer, Warren Buffett, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Steve Ballmer. Some names are deliberately excluded, for reasons you’ll understand shortly, but it is certainly not limited to these. Collectively, they’re worth half a trillion dollars. Together, they could rapidly collectivize thousands and thousands of these businesses in a massive incubation strategy. This isn’t expected to be done out of altruism, but in keeping with the principles of capitalism, while also saving the world. Great efficiencies could be achieved through information sharing, sourcing and cross-industry resource management, and strides can be made toward robustness and transparency into supply chain provenance, optimization and sustainability.
This could involve any range of company types, from gyms, restaurants, auto garages, office supply stores, tech startups… Backstopped by deep pockets, to operate with an agenda of not just making it through, but getting onto a back-end that streamlines and integrates everything from accounting, ordering, inventory management, transportation, fulfillment, even HR resources… The possible optimization and capabilities from the integration and knowledge roll-up could propel efficiencies and development.
With initial support of the collective, companies could take one of several paths in the ensuing few years: extract themselves from the collective as they wish or are able; remain members in the network of resources and benefits; or allow themselves to be fully consolidated into the collective. There are some among the wealthiest Americans who likely could not participate, since the effort might be construed as competitive to their own companies. But the result, considering those who remain members and those being consolidated, might be something that competes with vertically integrated Walmart, Amazon, Costco and Target. They are not the enemy – in fact, thank goodness for them and their abilities during this trying time.
Minds like these could re-think on a broad scale, the information integration across every one of the businesses involved, and massively increase efficiency, keep people employed, keep resources flowing. Yes, this would create issues of competition and privacy, and reshape society as we know it. But it could avert ripples of destruction we otherwise likely see.

 

Augmented Reality and Super Context

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

In the same vein as Word Lens, which I wrote about here just over a year ago, Aurasma too looks through your lens and “augments reality”. What does that mean though? And why is it interesting? At the most basic end of augmented reality, think of those times in touristy areas where you’ve had someone take a picture of you sticking your face through a board, on the front side of which – surrounding the hole you’re looking through – is painted some well-built body that surely isn’t mistakable as yours.

Image via Wikipedia

Add some basic technology, and you have photo doctoring capability that puts a border (or mustache) on your photo, or converts it to a sepia or negative view. Geo-code and/or date-stamp the image file, and integrate with information on buildings, locations, people and/or events that occurred there, and you can display that information along with the image when the coordinates correspond, a la Wikitude. Load up that app, turn it on, and walk around pointing your phone at things, and see what it says about your surroundings. (MagicPlan is an iPhone App, from Sensopia, that is a practical application of related technology, enabling CAD for making floorplans!)

Aurasma adds to this, by integrating image recognition (think: word recognition, but visually, picking up defined items) and rendering associated audio, video, animation, what have you – much like scanning a QR code would launch an associated action – but in this case, like WordLens, will do it in place on the image. Take a look:

The reality is that behind the scenes, with text, image or voice recognition, any action could be defined to be launched upon encountering triggers. Going further, imagine using multiple criteria or triggers to launched actions – tweaking the criteria for different scenarios. For example, a coffee company logo could spawn a video themed “start your morning with a cup” if the logo is seen early in the day, a “get a mid-day boost” if it is in the afternoon, or “keep your mind sharp tonight” if it is in the evening (adding “to get your studying done” if the geocode also indicates that the location is on a college campus. The mantra of late has been “context is king”. That’s context.

Here’s another hands-on example of use:

Related articles

• Augmented Reality (serablue.wordpress.com)
• Texas Instruments Commits to Augmented Reality for OMAP (phonescoop.com)
• The Augmented Reality adverts that are leaping off the page (pocket-lint.com)
• Wikitude now augmenting reality on Windows Phone (engadget.com)

 

Google+ (from outside the Circle)

Image by adamj1555 via Flickr

While I’m still actually waiting to get “in”, I have a couple of comments regarding Google+, from outside the Circle.

From descriptions of this Google Social Networking effort (following Orkut, Wave and Buzz), key elements as of now are: Circles (think of them as groups of people within your network); Sparks (which are topics or areas of interest); Hangouts (video chat rooms); Huddles (group chat); and Instant Upload (automatic mobile photo syncing).

Considering potential for integrating capability across product areas has always been most intriguing to me.  In serving them up “together”, G+ makes it that much more likely for capabilities to be used together.

First, and I think most interesting, is the way that the concept of Circles melds the idea of a network of friends/connections with tagging/categorization so that, without having the clunky thinking of classifying or inviting people to groups, the user is able to achieve the elusive sense of having multiple personas representable within one system.   Some people maintain their professional network in one system (LinkedIn, for example), and their personal network in another (e.g. facebook).  Others maintain multiple accounts in a single system in order to segregate their “work” online presence from their “family” or “personal play” selves.  For those who already maintain multiple Google accounts, G+ lets you log into multiple accounts at once.  I have yet to see how well you can interact in ways that cross over account lines.

Image via CrunchBase

The second area of note is the way that Sparks re-frames the idea of Alerts in a way that subtly shifts the nature of the material that results from them from being one-off emails or links — that you might dig into or forward on — to material that relate to particular areas of interest, which presumably parallel or align with groupings of people you associate with around those topics.  Twine had used the approach of integrating topic areas and social groupings for alerts – but these were groups that potential recipients would have to join.  In G+, the “proximity” to the Circles aspect, and the fact that those Circles are unique to the individual, and don’t require reciprocation, make for a compelling scenario for the “push” side of the equation. (At the same time, I see some potential issues in terms of “pull” and management by those on the receiving end).

Together, Sparks and Circles could take us a lot closer to a dream system I yearned for a few years back, that I referred to as a Virtual Dynamic Network.  In this, rather than having defined groups that you would need to join (which would send you related material along with much you would prefer to do without), material you both receive and send would be routed based on what it is about and how it is classified. I would love to see distinct sets of controls for in-bound vs out-bound content.

I won’t know until I get to try it, but ideally G+ will enable you to tie Sparks to Circles for you.  I’m also hoping you’re able to group your Circles – to relate and arrange them even hierarchically (consider: a large Circle for your work persona, which might contain multiple Circles for various client or team categories; or a large personal Circle, with sub-Circles for family, local friends, remote friends, classmates – all with overlap management to avoid multiply-sent content).

Hangouts and Huddles are by nature “social” already, for which you’ll presumably be able to seamlessly leverage Circles.  As with topical material, Instant Upload brings your photo content automatically one step closer to where you are sharing.  Success of all this as a social platform depends significantly on integration between the parts for seamless use by a user across capabilities – for example, adding someone who is participating on a video call or chat right into one or more of the Circles touched or represented by the other participants on that call or chat.

Image by Bill Gracey via Flickr

Leveraging other capabilities such as linguistic processing of AdSense (and G+ may already have this in the works) it would not be a stretch for the content in your interactions to generate suggestions for Sparks which you could simply validate — places or people in photos, words in chats, terms that show up in content within Spark items.  From there, it wouldn’t be far to being able to interact with your life through what I might call a “SparkMap” — reflecting relationships between terms within your areas of interest.

 

Related articles

• Google Unveils Google+ Social Networking Project (informationweek.com)
• Google Plus Project at 30 Thousand feet (ferreemoney.com)
• Quick Hit on Google + Plus (toddrjordan.com)
• Google PLUS Social Network is Facebook’s Newest Competition (socialmediatab.wordpress.com)
• 9 Reasons to Switch from facebook to Google+ (pcworld.com)

UPDATE: I’m now in, as of Friday afternoon, July 8. So now I’ll be playing, with more ideas to come…

Additional links:

How to Get Started with Google+… (socialmediaexaminer.com)

A good ScobleEncounter listen (scobleizer on cinch.fm)

Quite a collection of tips growing on this public google doc

 

More than Meets the Eye

Every now and again, I’m asked why one post or another of mine seems to be off on a tangent from “the usual”.  In these cases, it seems that while I’ve stayed true to the theme of connecting ideas to create value, the exchange for that value isn’t as obvious or direct.  To me, these are the times that are most interesting – involving translation of the currency, whether to or from knowledge, experience, or goods.  It is that value translation that is at the heart of the Second Integral.

I’ll speculate now that this will likley prove to be one of those times.

While walking through Maplewood, NJ last weekend, I came upon a new store in place of one that had recently closed.  I ventured in to see what it was about, and discovered it to be an art/craft boutique, with lots of hand crafted and nicely made/decorated items.   A woman approached me and asked if I needed any help, and I asked if these were all things made by people locally.  She was Cate Lazen, and she turns out to have been the founder of Arts Unbound, the organization that opened this “pop-up” store.  She answered my question, saying “well, yes, and everything in the store was made by people dealing with a disability of one sort or another.”

With a part of my brain dedicated full time to triangulation, I found myself automatically thinking about the coalescence of purposes here.  On the one hand, people with disabilities, engaging in artistic work as physical therapy, an expressive outlet, to perhaps generate income, while gaining pride, satisfaction, experience… all through their creative art.

Art as therapy itself is clearly valuable – but what struck me as particularly interesting was its combination of it here with (at least) two other constituencies.  According to Cate, the shop also employs people with disabilities, so it satisfies many of these same therepeutic purposes for the workers as it does the artists.  And of course, being a shop, it brings customers into the mix.

The simple combination of manufacturer + shopkeeper + consumer may not, on the surface, seem so interesting – it is just how a business works.  But the dynamic in this case yields some additional benefits beyond the traditional.

Along with the direct purposes noted above, for the artists and workers, and obviously filling customers’ needs, there are some more subtle byproducts as well, and they’re accentuated by the season’s spirit, due to the timing of the shop’s materialization just in time for the holidays.

Those who find their way to the shop will undoubtedly gain awareness of the overall purposes being served by the organization.   Additionally, buying a gift from this store provides the giver the satisfaction of giving twice (at least) – to the recipient of the gift, to the artist, to the shop worker, and even the good feeling of having contributed in some small way.  All this can even make you feel a little better about buying something for yourself.

Related articles

• Andy C’s report on Ars Electronica Fest 2010 (wklondon.typepad.com)
• You: Cuts threaten disability arts festival (guardian.co.uk)
• AbleNet Assistive Technology Featured in a Innovative Model Home at the Medtrade 2010 Conference (eon.businesswire.com)
• VSA and CVS Caremark All Kids Can Announce National Call for Children’s Art (prnewswire.com)
• Dance Movement Therapy (DMT) and Psychological Healing (mindbodyfitness.suite101.com)

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Annotation Business: Whose Page Is It Anyway?

Image by quinn.anya via Flickr

If you haven’t already encountered Google’s newly released Sidewiki, it is a web annotation feature accessible via browser plug-in or their toolbar – and is essentially a means for people to comment on pages and, unlike tools for making notes for just yourself (like sticky notes on your screen, or the electronic equivalent), these comments are visible to others who use it and visit those pages – right on the page with the content.  This isn’t a new concept, but one that gives cause to consider the “traditional” dimensions of web experience.Generally speaking, users of web resources have typically thought of the pages they view as being depicted in the way intended by the owner of the domain (or page).  If we want to get philosophical, ownership of the rendering of the page, it could be argued, is the user’s – and plug-ins empower such customization, as this is referred to.

Image via CrunchBase

Similarly, functionality of a site is has typically been considered by users to be provided/delivered by, and/or controlled by the site owner.  In the context of beginning to think of rendering as being other-webly (i.e. from other than the provider), the same holds true with respect to functionality.  The functionality being added to the experience here is around the ability to comment, and to see comments of others, about the page.

This starts to bring home the concept that the browser is acting as the actual platform, rather than the page/site itself.  In this case, we’re talking about the bringing together of the page’s content with toughts or opinions about the page – or about things that are on the page.  So in essence, what sidewiki adds is a virtualized forum – where the forum content is in the hands of Google rather than those of the owner of the site – but is displayed alongside the content itself.

Image via CrunchBase

This is not altogether different from what AdaptiveBlue’s Glue does – though there are a couple of key difference.  In both cases the user must be using the plug-in in order to see or add content – akin to joining the community.  And in both cases the comment / opinion content that is generated as a result, is in the control of the plug-in provider.  The first, and most notable difference (for now, at least) is that sidewiki “acts” as if the user generated content is about the page which it annotates, while Glue’s emphasis is on the asset to which the page refers.  The key benefit of the latter, in the cases where the commentary relates to an asset referenced on the page, is that it decouples the item referred to from location which makes reference to it.  This translates to Glue displaying  the comment on any page in where the same item is found, as opposed to just being seen on the same page where the comment was made.  This difference won’t likely persist, and seems more a matter of emphasis/focus and positioning.

Since the annotations are only visible to users making use of the particular service used when making the annotations, the more of these services we see, the more fragmented the sea of commentary.  The next level may be about “aboutness”, and differentiation by the ability to determine relatedness of otherwise unassociated commentary and content – and making the virtual connection between the two for the user.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Google Sidewiki: Do [No?] Evil
• Finally, A Web Annotation Product That Makes Sense: WebNotes PR (techcrunch.com)
• New: Google Sidewiki (blogoscoped.com)
• Sticky Notes Extension For Google Chrome (techie-buzz.com)
• Google Sidewiki interesting, but real utility unclear (arstechnica.com)
• Google Sidewiki Is a Universal Commenting System for the Web [Downloads] (lifehacker.com)

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Dawn of a New Era – and the Road Ahead

Image by gabirro via Flickr

I’m not generally one to comment on political matters (ok, I never do, other than this this month, for some reason) at least not for political purposes.  The linkage here to my typical areas of discussion should soon be readily aparrent.  Feel free to comment or email me if not, and I’d be glad to elaborate.

We are at an amazing point in history – and not just because Barack Obama is about to become the first African American president.  He is, thanks to his charisma, drive, eloquence, perspective… representative of the transition point we’ve reached.  This period of change has been brewing since 2000, and was set in motion in earnest in 2004.  His success in getting to this point has been both a catalyst for, and the result of, Americans being ready for what Obama has called “The Change We Need”.

This change is about transcendence, repair, and to borrow from the technical lexicon – interoperability – domestically and internationally, philosophically, infrastructurally.  Not to imply that there aren’t still dark days ahead, but we’ve already seen movement across party and racial lines, and participation, if not enthusiasm among the previously non-voting or heretofore politically and/or socially indifferent (- the numb or perhaps even the resigned or capitulated).

In these economic times, and while the world’s perception of the U.S. is at a low, we could ask for nothing greater than the combination of an energized and informed nation with an administration tuned to leveraging and guiding this  enthusiasm – to rebuild.  Interoperability – between the government and the people, between departments, programs, institutions – connecting the moving parts necessary – is the technology of this new era, to make this change work.

 

The semantic web, NON-technically speaking

Image via Wikipedia

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of being guest speaker at Seton Hall, where the TLTC (Teaching, Learning and Technology Center) held a session as part of their Summer Series. Not every university has the tech research focus as does MIT, for example – so I really like that the objective of this group is to help their faculty understand and take advantage of available technology to aid in their teaching efforts.

The event was called “Web2.0 Day”, so maybe you’re wondering why they wanted to hear about the semantic web. Part of the point of the day was to clarify some of the language they may hear thrown around about the web, and (pardon the web versioning references) part was to help define and classify the memes – and of course, part was to expose faculty and staff to specific tools they may want to use.

The interesting part of putting the the talk together was in taking a subject around which most conversations are focused on its technical underpinnings, and explaining it in a way that is NON-technical. While this slide-deck doesn’t impart the spoken words during the session, viewing them might still give a decent layperson-sense of what the semantic web is/will be. See presentation below:
(use the control buttons in the window below to page through the slides)

http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=shuweb2dayunan-1216310348206604-9&rel=0

| View | Upload your own

(click “view” if slide pane doesn’t appear above)

 

Where We Met-a

Riffing off some of my earlier posts (namely, Getting SemWebTech to Take, Opportunity Knocks, Community Semantics), I’ve been thinking a lot about the dynamics of meta data generation. I keep mentioning the value of latching onto activities in which people are already engaged, in order to devise processes that “catch on” or can be self-fulfilling. An aspect I haven’t talked so much about is – where in the processes the meta data gets created and captured.

In one context, the “service”, a proprietary hosted platform enables interconnection and linkages, profile-generation through the making of those associations seems the standard approach – whether the profile lives with the host (generally the case), or with the user (rarer).

There’s another context that is particularly interesting, and that is the “tool” approach, which I like to think of as an out-of-body (meta-body?) experience. Here, the mechanism is external to the platform or primary service being utilized, but is a mashable resource that can be tapped for identification and enablement of association with relevant content – and which can generate, on-the-fly, meta data which can then be cross-utilized, and reliably integrated into (or or leveraged for) further activities.

Zemanta and BlueOrganizer strike me as philosophically aligned with the latter, and Alt recently posted some ideas along these lines as well.