Friday, May 23, 2008

Tracking the internet into the 21st century

See videoclip of talk HERE.

Attended the Talk by Vinton G. Cerf, the vice-president and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google at the School of Computing, NUS Ah ha... what an interesting title, Internet Evangelist? An Internet "travelling preacher"? So creative! Did not exactly know what's expected from the talk... but definitely is a "What's next...", I thought, when I registered.

All in all, there wasn't a single minute went noticed... despite it was a 80-minute one-man show! No fancy slides, but it's the presentation that engaged the audience - the entire seminar room was fill-up!!! Why? Of course, I think the brand name "Google" is could be the first draw, for anybody who does not know who Vinton Cert was till today... but to sustain the interest of the audience, it's the belief and in-depth knowledge of the presenter that's translated through the talk that make the difference!

Found a similar set of slides in the internet (click HERE) probably used less than a year ago... but there are some differences. Also, to satisfy my curiosity, went to YouTube to do a search... and found a couple of his presentations there... mostly from 2007's 3rd quarter onwards. Though using the same title, but each time, there were updates... of course, yet found the one I saw at SoC (ok, there's probably the most updated version, I guess). This is another learning point for us: Despite of the tough and patience-testing QC process the team has to go through, we must keep ourselves abreast, progress together with the rest of the world... so, should continually be seeking new updates and integrate the relevant ones into our workshop materials! (of course, whoever put the rubber stamp on the materials earlier has to accept this idea, too!)

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Here are some points from the talk... (notice that it actually sets the background, context... before moving into the 'possibilities' (dreams???) to come in 2035. Er... why 2035? Don't know? Probably because it's far, yet near enough for us to see whether what's projected (anticipated?) will come to reality?

  • It was amazing to hear that, Asia has ranked the top in terms of Internet population (with 510.5 million) against the world's 1, 320 million. However, in terms of internet penetration, it's only 13.7%, which is much below than the world's 20.0%. What does that say? It's so much potential in Asia!
  • What happens to the world population in 2300? The patterns of population growth in the various continents - who's going to drive the behaviour patterns of internet users? (www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf)

Projections (Anticipations?) in 2035 include:

  • IT to substitute and minimise transportation - ie. virtual meetings will become ubitquous, saving people from traveling to meet face-to-face physically, but to meet face-to-face virtually. CISCO has already come up with a video conferencing system that comes with screen projection of images of real-life size... and more amazingly, the sound system - the sound is heard at the direction where it 'should' come from. So, reality has moved into another dimension! Well, it'll take some time to make its way to the industry as it costs more than (US$300,000) (Website 1: http://www.cisco.com/web/solutions/telepresence/fox/index.html Website 2: http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/webdev/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=193401457 Website 3: http://news.cnet.com/Can-Cisco-be-a-video-star/2100-1037_3-6128204.html)
  • IT will become a big consumer (energy production; consumption)
  • Internet will turn to 52 (born 1983), with a population of 8.12 billion and internet penetration of 70% (world average, anticipating >100% in developed countries!). Device penetration is projected to be 60 billion (0-10 devices per person).

Information Ecology

  • Wired & Wireless are here to stay...
  • Online Business: Intra-& Inter-corporate; Cloud Computing; Collaboration in Virtual Environment; Seamless joining of real & virtual environments - an interesting one, when it's not just performing a virtual experiment with objects created in the virtual environment, but these 'virtual objects' are representations of real objects in real labs - The user carries out these laboratory experiments 'physically' while they're else where!
  • Convergence of digital objects and processes - discovery & rendezvous
  • State-wide database -Prediction of epidemic, based on the searches/queries entered into the search engines. It was reported that this could surfaced about 30 days before them epidemic. Wow! There's where data analysis can help to anticipate and prepare for certain crisis.

Socio-economic Effects of Internet 2035

  • Internet transport & display units
  • Internet group interactions - political actions, polling, marketplaces
  • Information consumers are the producers (eg. blogging, Youtube - 10h amount of video every minute)
  • Innovation at the edge (eg. wikipedia) - data mining, mass information
  • Social networking (eg. facebook) - How about a Robotic representative?
  • Gameplaying (eg. Second life) - Holographics
  • New Business model (eg. eBay, Amazon, Google) - Paper pubication limited to special editions; online is the norm.
  • Mobility & Mobiles 2035
  • 10 billion mobiles (with 85% internet enabled)
  • text-web access
  • remote control of services and devices
  • innovative interfaces (haptics - multi-touch screen)
  • navigation systems (Geo location-based services)
  • Internet-enabled socks (clothing) (http://news.zdnet.co.uk/emergingtech/0,1000000183,2089570,00.htm)
  • Internet-enabled surf board (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3812357.stm)
  • Universal Remote Controls

Click HERE to see recorded lecture