The next phase of the Internet will be about creating value from the WOW (Wide Open Web)
So far the primary theme of the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco seems to be openness and APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), which I defined in our Web 2.0 Framework as “A defined interface to a computer application or database that allows access by other applications.” Web companies new and old are announcing APIs that provide access to the data that resides on their site.
ReadWriteWeb writes about the next frontier after ubiquitous APIs, an interview of Web 2.0 keynoter Max Levchin focuses on the implications of APIs on every application, and Tim O’Reilly in his keynote says that the paradox is that applications built on open, decentralized networks are leading to new concentrations of power.
In the last weeks I’ve been looking across what is available on APIs, and it is quite extraordinary. Driven significantly by the impetus of Google’s leadership, over the last couple of years the industry has taken a massive turn towards openness, making it hard to run online initiatives any other way.
I am finding myself completely staggered by the possibilities. There are so many ways that this vast trove of information can be used in new and innovative applications. ReadWriteWeb’s article provides a list of the ways APIs can be used. Some of the promising areas I see include:
Content aggregation. Despite the existing proliferation of blog and feed aggregators, there are many more opportunities to create highly specialized content aggregators, bringing together the web’s most relevant content in niche domains.
Collaborative filtering. The richness of information about people’s content preferences available from something like FriendFeed (or the individual feeds that go into it) make it possible to correlate taste across media and genres.
Latent social networks: Suggesting friends or connections based not just on profile or musical tastes, but an integrated view of preferences and activities. This could be particularly powerful in dating.
Boston Globe covers the Extinction Timeline
Alex Beam, the award-winning writer for the Boston Globe, has written his latest column about the Extinction Timeline, which was co-created by Future Exploration Network and What’s Next (and displayed below – click on the image for the full timeline as a pdf). Alex interviewed me last week, and extracted from our wide-ranging conversation thoughts on the demise of newspapers, national currencies, public libraries, butchers, British royalty, and far more.
Alex concludes his analysis of our timeline by examining my penchant for robot pets, and concludes that “I have seen the future, and it may need oil.”
Automated content creation: pushing the boundaries of human value
The history of human society has largely been about replacing human work with tools and machines. From the plough to the spinning jenny to the computer, people have stopped doing tasks because machines can do them better. In most cases we are getting rid of things that we don’t particularly enjoy doing anyway, and it’s hard to take pride in doing work that can be done by a machine. In a way, humanity can be defined by what it is that humans can do that machines can’t do. That boundary is continually being pushed further, and in coming years we will need to move to increasingly complex and imaginative tasks of synthesis and creativity that computers cannot do.
Philip Parker, a professor at INSEAD, is probably doing more than anyone else to push this boundary. An article in the New York Times titled He Wrote 200,000 Books (but Computers Did Some of the Work) describes how he has automated the process of creating books and econometric reports, and has built a solid book business on top of this. A YouTube video by Parker (see below) reviews his patent on automated content creation, and describes in detail how this kind of report is automatically generated. It also shows how Parker is automating video and game creation, for example creating educational programs and interactive language teaching tools, which appear at first glance to be very good.
Part of the implication of this is that, if so much content creation can be automated, what will people need to do to create value moving forward? In Parker’s example, an industry forecast report of 250 pages is created in 13 minutes. He sells these kinds of reports for good money, and does well out of it. In many cases the market is too small to justify a person writing the report. However there is no question that a significant part of an analyst’s work can be automated. The boundaries of human value are being pushed further, and this is just the beginning.
The information processing view of humanity
I have just returned from a round-world trip, passing through Singapore, London, New York, San Francisco and back to Sydney in slightly less than two weeks. The trip was centered on speaking, client work, and meetings to prepare for the Future of Media Summit 2008. However a fair chunk of my time was catching up with extremely interesting people such as Sheen Levine, Euan Semple, Dean Collins, Mike Jackson, Napier Collyns, Eric Best, Shannon Clark, JD Lasica, John Maloney, and Ben Metcalfe.
We now all know that the economy revolves around conversations. The insights I got from my unstructured conversations with these people was immense. Yet the nature of conversations is that they are – largely – evanescent. At the same time, the extraordinary rise of social media means that the thoughts arising from millions of conversations are now available to the world at large. In fact, many bloggers say that they write mainly for themselves, in capturing some of the interesting things they are seeing and thinking. Trevor Cook is just one example of a blogger who writes notes from all of the conference sessions he attends (including his reflections on our Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum) for his own sake, making his blog a repository for personal reference, by the by creating something that others can find useful.
The trouble was, I didn’t find time in my intense travel schedule to blog about all of my interesting meetings and conversations. I will probably post a few thoughts on these meetings over the next week or two if I get the chance, but the reality is it’s hard to do in a very packed schedule.
Keynote: building the networked professional firm
On week I delivered a keynote in London on behalf of LexisNexis to a select group of senior executives of large professional services firms. The broad theme was the future of professional services and in particular practice management. In my speech I emphasized the network perspective on professional firms.
In an economy where value is increasingly based on deep professional knowledge and relationships, it is increasingly valid to ask why professional firms exist. Why don’t professionals practice as individuals, and collaborate with other professionals simply as client situations require it? In fact there is currently a significant shift to professionals working independently or in very small groups. Of course there are a number of good answers to this. Most importantly, the existence of professional firms should facilitate different expertise to be brought together seamlessly to address clients’ issues and create uniquely valuable offerings.
However this is only valid if the firm is well connected internally. Professionals need to be aware of each others’ expertise, and actively bring that together in teams to meet client needs. I have described some of the key issues underlying that in my presentation Tapping Networks to Bring the Best of the Firm to Clients that I did at the Network Roundtable conference last November.
