Big Data, Cloud, Smart Mobile And Even AR Morph Into One Mind Boggling Thing

IEEE Talk: Integrated Big Data, The Cloud, & Smart Mobile: Actually One Big Thing

by David Mayes

This IEEE Talk discusses the three biggest trends in online technology and proposes that in fact, they represent one huge integrated trend that is already having a major impact on the way we live, work and think. The 2012 Obama Campaign’s Dashboard mobile application, integrating Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile is perhaps the most significant example of this trend, combining all three technologies into one big thing. A major shakeout and industry consolidation seems inevitable. Additional developments as diverse as augmented reality, the Internet of Things, Smart Grid, near field communication, mobile payment processing, and location-based services are also considered as linked to this overall trend.

IEEE Talk: Integrated Big Data, The Cloud, & Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? from David Mayes

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IEEE Talk: Integrated Big Data, The Cloud, & Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? Presentation Transcript

• 1. Big Data, The Cloud, & Smart Mobile: Integrated Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 1
• 2. IEEE: UBC Okanagan Wednesday, February 6th, 2013 ©David Mayes 2
• 3. Speaker Introduction IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 3
• 4. David Mayes: LinkedIn Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mayo615 Personal Blog: http://mayo615.com UBC Office: EME 4151 (250) 807-9821 / Hours by appt. Email: david.mayes@ubc.ca mayo0615@gmail.com Mobile: (250) 864-9552 Twitter: @mayo615 Experience: Executive management, access to venture capital, International business development, sales & marketing, entrepreneurial mentorship, technology assessment, strategic planning, renewable energy technology. Intel Corporation (US/Europe/Japan), 01 Computers Group (UK) Ltd, Mobile Data International (Canada/Intl.), Silicon Graphics (US), Sun Microsystems (US), Ascend Communications (US/Intl.), P-Cube (US/Israel/Intl.), Global Internet Group LLP (US/Intl.), New Zealand Trade & Enterprise. IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 4
• 5. Agenda • Some Historical Context • The Emergence of SoMoClo • The Emergence of Big Data • The Emergence of Smart Mobile • The Convergence of ToDaClo • What Do You Think? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 5
• 6. Some Historical Context IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 6
• 7. Canada’s McLuhan: The First Hint “The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village.” Marshall McLuhan, “Gutenberg Galaxy”, 1962, Canadian author, educator, & philosopher (1911 – 1980) IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? Video: The “McLuhan” Scene from Annie Hall © David Mayes 7
• 8. Stuart Brand, Jobs & Woz: The Whole Earth Catalog IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 8
• 9. Grove, Noyce and Moore IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? “We had no idea at all that we had turned the first stone on something that was going to be an $80 billion business.” -Gordon Moore ©David Mayes 9
• 10. Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Vin Cerf IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 10
• 11. Agenda • Some Historical Context • The Emergence of SoMoClo • The Emergence of Big Data • The Emergence of Smart Mobile • The Convergence of ToDaClo • What Do You Think? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not?
• 12. The Emergence of SoMoClo IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? Social + Mobile + Cloud ©David Mayes 12
• 13. Emergence of Social Media IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 13
• 14. 2012 Social Media Market Landscape IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 14
• 15. Emergence of “Cloud Computing” IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 15
• 16. Emergence of End-user Cloud Apps IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 16
• 17. 2012 Cloud Enterprise Players IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 17
• 18. The Key Issue: Data Privacy Reliability, and Security Despite reassurances, there is no permanent solution, no silver bullet. The only solution is to unplug IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 18
• 19. Recent Cyber Security News: • Google Chairman, Eric Schmidt’s new book on China: • “the world’s most active and enthusiastic filterer of information” as well as “the most sophisticated and prolific” hacker of foreign companies. In a world that is becoming increasingly digital, the willingness of China’s government and state companies to use cyber crime gives the country an economic and political edge. • NY Times, WSJ hacking last week traced to China • Twitter theft of 250K users personal information last week • Sony PlayStation Anonymous hacks (twice in 2 weeks) IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 19
• 20. Agenda • Some Historical Context • The Emergence of SoMoClo • The Emergence of Big Data • The Emergence of Smart Mobile • The Convergence of ToDaClo • What Do You Think? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not?
• 21. The Emergence of “Big Data” IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 21
• 22. Emergence of “Big Data” • Major advances in scale and sophistication of government intelligence gathering and analysis • Cost no object • NSA PRISM global telecom surveillance programPost 9/11 World IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 22
• 23. An Interesting Scientific Analogy Chaos, with reference to chaos theory, refers to an apparent lack of order in a system that nevertheless obeys particular laws or rules; this understanding of chaos is synonymous with dynamical instability, a condition discovered by the physicist Henri Poincare in the early 20th century that refers to an inherent lack of predictability in some physical systems. IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 23
• 24. Key Drivers of the Emergence of Big Data • Moore’s Law – compute cost and power • Design rules, multi-core, 3D design • Massive cost decline in data storage • Emergence of solid state memristor • Google Spanner 1st global real-time database • DARPA “Python” programming language • Data Center data storage accumulation • 2.7 zettabytes currently and growing rapidly • A zettabyte equals 1021 bytes (1000 exabytes) IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 24
• 25. The Big Data Landscape Today IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 25
• 26. The Key Issue: Privacy “Get over it! You have no privacy!” Scott McNealy, former CEO of Sun Microsystems IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 26
• 27. Agenda • Some Historical Context • The Emergence of SoMoClo • The Emergence of Big Data • The Emergence of Smart Mobile • The Convergence of ToDaClo • What Do You Think? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not?
• 28. The Emergence of Smart Mobile IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 28
• 29. Emergence of Smart Mobile IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 29
• 30. Key Drivers of Smart Mobile • Moore’s Law – compute cost and power • Design rules, multi-core, 3D design • Focus on reducing heat: gate leakage • Intel Atom “all day battery life” is a beginning • Massive cost decline in data storage • Mobile bandwidth:4G/LTE “no cost difference” • “White space” metro Wi-Fi potential maybe • New available spectrum between digital TV channels: increased transmit power • PC market death: Dell Computer & HP IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 30
• 31. Mobile-based Services • GPS, Cloud, personal and database info on mobile • Geotagging from current location tied to your objective: • Find merchandise, restaurant, bar, etc. • Find and tag people • Find people with similar interests nearby • The rise of the mobile gaming market • Already well-established in Hong Kong, Seoul • North America far behind Asian telecom markets • Facebook has just announced LBS plans • The downside: battery drain issue still critical • “People want their phones to do too much” • 4G LTE, Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS, Streaming, Mobile Gaming IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 31
• 32. Location-based Services Landscape IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 32
• 33. Agenda • Some Historical Context • The Emergence of SoMoClo • The Emergence of Big Data • The Emergence of Smart Mobile • The Convergence of ToDaClo • What Do You Think? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not?
• 34. The Convergence of “ToDaClo” Touch + Data + Cloud IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 34
• 35. David Mayes ‹#›
• 36. Agenda • Some Historical Context • The Emergence of SoMoClo • The Emergence of Big Data • The Emergence of Smart Mobile • The Convergence of ToDaClo • What Do You Think? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not?
• 37. Discussion: Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile, Big Deal or Not? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 37
• 38. My Key Takeaway Points • Even from the 50,000 foot level, a shakeout and consolidation seem inevitable • A lot of people are going to lose a lot of money • There will be “snake oil” sold that does not work • Nevertheless these three new markets are actually one unified market, and likely: The Next Big Thing IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 38
• 39. What Do You Think? • No. ToDaClo is mostly media hype, and not a “Big Deal.” • I’m skeptical. ToDaClo will probably be a “Big Deal,” but I haven’t seen much yet • Maybe. I do not know yet whether ToDaClo will be a Big Deal • Yes. ToDaClo is a Big Deal and it is already changing our lives IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 39
• 40. Thank You! IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 40
• 41. ©David Mayes 41

 

Trump, Brexit And The Rise of Populism

The Rise of Populism and Cultural Politics: A Reaction to Globalization

The Decline of Economics As the Pivotal Issue of Politics

We are witnessing an extraordinary global upheaval, the outcome of which seems very uncertain at best. In my view, it is a populist reaction to globalization, and a dramatic shift in politics around the World, from economic issues to cultural issues.  I see globalization as ultimately an inevitable evolution of human culture, but which by its very nature and the acceleration in the pace of change with the World Wide Web, is fomenting unrest and reaction. Marshall McLuhan, the great Canadian visionary correctly predicted the rise of the “global village” in the 1960’s.  But neither McLuhan nor we foresaw the backlash against the Internet, efforts by China, Russia, Turkey and other countries to block free access to the Internet and simultaneously the rise of xenophobia, racism and economic protectionism. The global economy also has essentially stagnated since the Global Financial Meltdown. This has been a warning of greater issues rising up around the World. Xenophobia, racism, gender issues, freedom of expression, environmentalism, and terrorism have displaced economics as the top political issues. How this all plays out in the “global village” is anyone’s guess, but it is also important to remember the lesson of King Canute, who insisted he could stop the waves.

Backlash Against Marshall McLuhan’s “Global Village” Unlikely To Stop The Waves

I am sharing here a seminal editorial on this issue by Fareed Zakaria, of CNN GPS, perhaps the best media program on international politics. Zakaria cites the recent study by Richard Inglehart and Pippa Norris at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, which supports the ideas expressed here. I have also provided a link to the Harvard study.

WHY WE ARE ALL DEPLORABLES NOW

Posted by Fareed Zakaria on September 15, 2016

By Fareed Zakaria
Thursday, September 15, 2016, The Washington Post

Source: Why we are all deplorables now

Whether you put them in a basket or not, the question of this election is: Who are Donald Trump’s supporters? One way to answer that question is to widen its scope beyond the United States. Trump is part of a broad populist trend running across the Western world. Over the past few decades, we have seen the rise of populism — both left- and right-wing — from Sweden to Greece, Denmark to Hungary. In each place, the discussion tends to focus on forces that are particular to each country and its political landscape. But it’s happening in so many countries with so many different political systems, cultures and histories that there must be some common causes.

Harvard Kennedy School of Government Study

While populism is widespread in the West, it is largely absent in Asia, even in the advanced economies of Japan and South Korea. It is actually in retreat in Latin America, where left-wing populists in Venezuela, Argentina and Bolivia ran their countries into the ground over the past decade. But in Europe, we have seen a steady and strong rise in populism almost everywhere. In an important research paper for Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris calculate that European populist parties of the right and left have gone from 6.7 percent and 2.4 percent of the vote in the 1960s, respectively, to 13.4 percent and 12.7 percent in the 2010s.

Read More:Trump, Brexit and the rise of Populism, Inglehart and Norris, Harvard Kennedy School of Government

The most striking finding of the paper, which points to a fundamental cause of this rise of populism, is the decline of economics as the pivot of politics. The way we think about politics today is still shaped by the basic 20th-century left-right divide. Left-wing parties advocated increased government spending, a larger welfare state and regulations on business. Right-wing parties wanted limited government, fewer safety nets and more laissez-faire policies. Voting patterns reinforced this ideological divide, with the working class voting for the left and the middle and upper classes for the right.

Inglehart and Norris note that the old voting patterns have been waning for decades. “By the 1980s,” they write, “class voting had fallen to the lowest levels ever recorded in Britain, France, Sweden, and West Germany. . . . In the U.S., it had fallen so low [by the 1990s] that there was virtually no room for further decline.” Today, an American’s economic status is a far worse predictor of voting preferences than, say, his or her views on same-sex marriage. The authors also analyzed party platforms in recent decades and found that, since the 1980s, economic issues have become less important. Non-economic issues — social, environmental — have greatly increased in importance.

I wonder whether this is partly because left and right have converged more than ever on economic policy. In the 1960s, the difference between the two sides was vast. The left wanted to nationalize industries; the right wanted to privatize pensions and health care. While politicians on the right continue to make the laissez-faire case, it is largely theoretical. In power, conservatives have accommodated themselves to the mixed economy as liberals have to market forces. The difference between Tony Blair’s policies and David Cameron’s was real but historically marginal.

This period, from the 1970s to today, also coincided with a slowdown in economic growth across the Western world. And in the past two decades, there has been an increasing sense that economic policy cannot do much to fundamentally reverse this slowdown. Voters have noticed that, whether it’s tax cuts, reforms or stimulus plans, public policy seems less powerful in the face of larger forces. As economics declined as the central force defining politics, its place was taken by a grab bag of issues that could be described as “culture.” It began, as Inglehart and Norris note, with young people in the 1960s embracing a post-materialist politics — self-expression, gender, race, environmentalism. This trend then generated a backlash from older voters, particularly men, seeking to reaffirm the values they grew up with. The key to Trump’s success in the Republican primaries was to realize that while the conservative establishment preached the gospel of free trade, low taxes, deregulation and entitlement reform, conservative voters were moved by very different appeals — on immigration, security and identity.

This is the new landscape of politics, and it explains why partisanship is so high, rhetoric so shrill and compromise seemingly impossible. You could split the difference on economics — money, after all, can always be divided. But how do you compromise on the core issue of identity? Each side today holds deeply to a vision of America and believes genuinely that what its opponents want is not just misguided but, well, deplorable.

(c) 2016, Washington Post Writers Group

Facebook’s International Business Blunder: Following In The Footsteps of Google

With good intentions, and also a good dose of Facebook business strategy to expand its base of users, Mark Zuckerberg has struck out to promote Free Basics, a free limited Internet for the poor in less developed countries sponsored by Facebook and its local telecommunications partners. While on the face of it Free Basics would seem to have merit, Zuckerberg has run into a wall of opposition.  On close inspection of the details, Facebook’s problem, despite all of its global corporate sophistication, appears to be naïveté about the foreign markets it is trying to enter. It is possible to argue that Zuckerberg and Facebook have the best of intentions and sound arguments.  But the best of intentions and sound arguments mean nothing if the key element lacking is a clear understanding of the targeted foreign market, and the crucial need to adapt to it or fail.  Zuckerberg could have looked no further back than 2013 for clues to why he has failed.

In 2012 and 2013, I was involved in an effort to deploy wide area wireless Internet capability to broad swaths of India. This involved working with large Indian corporate partners. We were also working at a time when Google, Microsoft, and others were also busily competing to deploy so-called “white space Metro WiFi” to rural areas in lesser developed countries. Google was also experimenting with its “loon balloon” project to use high altitude balloons to deploy Internet access points in remote areas.  It quickly became clear to us that the Indian government and corporate officials wanted only an indigenous Indian Internet solution, which fit our strategy of working with Indian partners.  Google and the other big U.S. based companies were viewed as neo-colonialists. Ironically, on March 19, 2013, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt wrote an editorial in The Times of India, “Which Internet Will India Choose,” in a well-intentioned effort to convince Indian leaders of the Google vision for the Internet in India.  For all intents and purposes, Schmidt’s editorial landed on deaf ears in India.  Also, regrettably, Indian corporate culture being what it is, not much happened on the Indian side to develop their own Internet deployment solution. All of this is not unusual in foreign markets.

Read more: Eric Schmidt: Which Internet Will India Choose?

As a veteran of high technology international business, I am intrigued by these international business blunders by otherwise very sophisticated business leaders and corporations.  They seem to repeat themselves over the years, sometimes in different ways and in different markets. Years ago I stumbled on David A. Ricks book, Blunders in International Business, now in its fourth edition, with new and updated case studies.  It is enlightening and also quite funny.  I recommend the book to Mark Zuckerberg.

Mark Zuckerberg can’t believe Egypt  & India  aren’t grateful for Facebook’s free internet

The nerve. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)

December 28, 2015Quartz India

All Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to do is make the world a better place for his new daughter. While he’s technically on paternity leave, he couldn’t sit idly by as India attempts to halt Internet.org, Facebook’s initiative to provide free but limited internet to the developing world.E

Last week, the Times of India reported that the country’s telecom regulatory body had asked Facebook’s partner, wireless carrier Reliance, to cease the Internet.org service as it determines whether operators should be able to price their services based on content. Responding to criticisms of the program, Zuckerberg penned an op-ed published Dec. 28 in the English-language daily. In it, he expressed annoyance that India is debating net neutrality—a principle dictating that telecom operators provide people with equal access to the internet—as the country struggles to connect its citizens to the internet.

In the process of defending Internet.org, Zuckerberg paints India—where about a billion people are not connected to the internet—as backwards for even daring to question the benefits of Facebook’s charity-like endeavor.

“Who could possibly be against this?” he asks passive-aggressively. “Surprisingly, over the last year there’s been a big debate about this in India.”

Yes, net neutrality is a big deal—and not just in India. In the US, for example, an appeals court is currently examining the legality of a new set of net-neutrality rules enacted by the Federal Communications Commission this year. But Zuckerberg almost portrays net neutrality as a first-world problem that doesn’t apply to India because having some service is better than no service.

Net neutrality activists have long argued that Internet.org provides a “walled garden” experience because the sites that users can access for free are determined by Facebook and its telecom partners, essentially making them gatekeepers to the internet for poor people.

While Zuckerberg acknowledges that Internet.org, which is currently active in more than 30 countries, does not provide people with access to the full web, he argues that it’s a step in the right direction. According to the Facebook CEO, half of the people who come online for the first time using Internet.org decide to pay for full internet access within 30 days.

Instead of wanting to give people access to some basic internet services for free, critics of the program continue to spread false claims–even if that means leaving behind a billion people.

Instead of recognizing the fact that Free Basics is opening up the whole internet, they continue to claim–falsely–that this will make the internet more like a walled garden.

Instead of welcoming Free Basics as an open platform that will partner with any telco, and allows any developer to offer services to people for free, they claim–falsely–that this will give people less choice.

Instead of recognizing that Free Basics fully respects net neutrality, they claim–falsely–the exact opposite.

Zuckerberg continues by offering an anecdote of a farmer named Ganesh, who uses the free internet service to check weather updates and commodity prices. “How does Ganesh being able to better tend his crops hurt the internet?” he asks rhetorically.

But examined more closely, his arguments don’t directly address the concerns of net neutrality activists. For the people who choose not to upgrade or can’t afford to pay for full internet access, Internet.org does indeed provide a walled garden of online content. Millions of people already have a skewed perception of the web, believing Facebook to be the internet, a Quartz analysis has shown.

Furthermore, while Facebook can add more telecom partners, which would theoretically open up the number of sites and services Internet.org users could access for free, it currently has only one partner in India, Reliance.

Zuckerberg also fails to address the claims that zero-rated services such as Internet.org amount to economic discrimination—that this is essentially poor internet for poor people. Furthermore, in an op-ed published in the Times of India in October, net-neutrality advocacy group Savetheinternet.in quoted Tim Berners-Lee, father of the internet, as saying: “Economic discrimination is just as harmful as technical discrimination, so [internet service providers] will still be able to pick winners and losers online.” Facebook’s walled garden could very well determine the sites and services that will succeed in India.

Over and over again, Zuckerberg has pointed to research showing that internet access can help lift people out of poverty. The fact remains that Internet.org provides limited, slow, and subpar access, and these limitations make it all the more difficult for people to climb the economic ladder. As Naveen Patnaik, chief minister of the Indian state Odisha, has said: “If you dictate what the poor should get, you take away their rights to choose what they think is best for them.”

The Digital Utopian Vision of Marshall McLuhan and Stewart Brand Is Cracking

It appears to me that the original vision and promise of the Internet, referred to by many as Digital Utopianism, is at severe risk of deteriorating into a “balkanized”  and severely impaired World Wide Web.

Internet barriers, censorship, protectionist Internet policy, and ubiquitous surveillance seem to be the emerging new reality.  Notable digital luminaries the likes of Vin Cerf and Bill Gates have been questioned on this point, and both have expressed no major concern about deterioration of the freedom of the Internet or with the original Utopian vision.  The argument is that the World Wide Web cannot be effectively blocked or censored.  Google would probably respond that their “loon balloons” could simply be launched to counter censorship. As a long time Silicon Valley high tech executive, I understand this optimistic view, but the facts on the ground are now providing serious evidence that the Internet is under attack, and may not survive unless there is a significant shift in these new trends.

This week alone, Turkey’s Erdogan has tried to block both Twitter and YouTube to prevent Turks from viewing evidence of his corrupt government. This morning’s New York Times reports Edward Snowden’s latest revelation.  While the U.S. government and media were investigating and publicly reporting on Chinese government Internet espionage and Chinese network equipment manufacturer Huawei, the NSA, the British GCHQ and Canada’s  Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) ,  were all collaborating, doing exactly the same thing. The hypocrisy and irony of this is not lost on either the Chinese or the Internet community. CBS 60 Minutes reported on the Chinese espionage, but has been essentially silent on NSA’s own transgressions. 60 Minutes even broadcast a report that NSA metadata was essentially harmless, which has now been shown to be false. The 60 Minutes objective reporting problem is the canary in the coal mine of the corporate takeover of media and the Web.  Protectionist policies in various countries targeted against Google, Microsoft and others are emerging. One of the many negative effects of the NSA revelations was the announcement this week that the United States was giving up control of the International Committee for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which essentially sets Internet traffic policy. Finally, this week, Netflix spoke out forcefully against the “peering agreement” it was blackmailed into signing with Comcast to insure “quality of service” (QOS) for Netflix programming to the edges of the Web.

Read more: NSA breached Chinese servers

Read more: Netflix Thinks Peering Should Be A Net Neutrality Issue

I recently came across Professor Fred Turner, Professor of Communication at Stanford. It has been a revelation for me.  His book, “From Counterculture to Cyberculture’ is an acclaimed milestone work. Turner has articulated the World I lived in the counterculture of the 1960’s and in the early Silicon Valley. His work explaining the evolution from the “counterculture” of the 1960’s to the emerging new “cyberculture” of the late 1980’s and 1990’s is an excellent record of that time in northern California.  This was the World of Steve Jobs at that time and his personal evolvement to a digital Utopian.  It is detailed in Jobs biography, and in Jobs wonderful Stanford University 2005 commencement speech, in which he also acknowledged the importance of Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth Catalog.  This was also my countercultural World as a Communications student at San Jose State at that time, in the heart of the Silicon Valley, and subsequent high tech career, beginning at Intel Corporation.  But even Professor Turner has expressed his own ambivalence about the future direction of the Web, though only from the standpoint of less worrying lack of diversity of Web communities. My concern is much more deeply based on current evidence and much more ominous.

Fred Turner, Stanford Professor of Communication – Counterculture to Cyberculture

Stewart Brand, the father of the Whole Earth Catalog and the original digital utopia visionary, has been rethinking its basic concepts. Brand has come around 180 degrees from environmental Utopianism based on “back to the land,” and is now embracing the future importance of urban enclaves. While this new urban view is now a widely held idea by many futurists, it can also be viewed as another facet of the end of digital utopia.  This TEDTalk by Brand lays out his new vision.  Where we go from here is anyone’s guess.

Integrated Big Data, Cloud, and Smart Mobile: One Big Deal or Not?

IEEE Talk: Integrated Big Data, The Cloud, & Smart Mobile: One Big Deal or Not?

by David Mayes on Jul 10, 2013

This IEEE Talk discusses the three biggest trends in online technology and proposes that in fact, they represent one huge integrated trend that is already having a major impact on the way we live, work and think. The 2012 Obama Campaign’s Dashboard mobile application, integrating Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile is perhaps the most significant example of this trend, combining all three technologies into one big thing. A major shakeout and industry consolidation seems inevitable. Additional developments as diverse as the Internet of Things, Smart Grid, near field communication, mobile payment processing, and location based services are also considered as linked to this overall trend.

IEEE Talk: Integrated Big Data, The Cloud, & Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? from David Mayes

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IEEE Talk: Integrated Big Data, The Cloud, & Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? Presentation Transcript

• 1. Big Data, The Cloud, & Smart Mobile: Integrated Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 1
• 2. IEEE: UBC Okanagan Wednesday, February 6th, 2013 ©David Mayes 2
• 3. Speaker Introduction IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 3
• 4. David Mayes: LinkedIn Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mayo615 Personal Blog: http://mayo615.com UBC Office: EME 4151 (250) 807-9821 / Hours by appt. Email: david.mayes@ubc.ca mayo0615@gmail.com Mobile: (250) 864-9552 Twitter: @mayo615 Experience: Executive management, access to venture capital, International business development, sales & marketing, entrepreneurial mentorship, technology assessment, strategic planning, renewable energy technology. Intel Corporation (US/Europe/Japan), 01 Computers Group (UK) Ltd, Mobile Data International (Canada/Intl.), Silicon Graphics (US), Sun Microsystems (US), Ascend Communications (US/Intl.), P-Cube (US/Israel/Intl.), Global Internet Group LLP (US/Intl.), New Zealand Trade & Enterprise. IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 4
• 5. Agenda • Some Historical Context • The Emergence of SoMoClo • The Emergence of Big Data • The Emergence of Smart Mobile • The Convergence of ToDaClo • What Do You Think? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 5
• 6. Some Historical Context IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 6
• 7. Canada’s McLuhan: The First Hint “The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village.” Marshall McLuhan, “Gutenberg Galaxy”, 1962, Canadian author, educator, & philosopher (1911 – 1980) IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? Video: The “McLuhan” Scene from Annie Hall © David Mayes 7
• 8. Stuart Brand, Jobs & Woz: The Whole Earth Catalog IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 8
• 9. Grove, Noyce and Moore IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? “We had no idea at all that we had turned the first stone on something that was going to be an $80 billion business.” -Gordon Moore ©David Mayes 9
• 10. Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Vin Cerf IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 10
• 11. Agenda • Some Historical Context • The Emergence of SoMoClo • The Emergence of Big Data • The Emergence of Smart Mobile • The Convergence of ToDaClo • What Do You Think? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not?
• 12. The Emergence of SoMoClo IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? Social + Mobile + Cloud ©David Mayes 12
• 13. Emergence of Social Media IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 13
• 14. 2012 Social Media Market Landscape IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 14
• 15. Emergence of “Cloud Computing” IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 15
• 16. Emergence of End-user Cloud Apps IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 16
• 17. 2012 Cloud Enterprise Players IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 17
• 18. The Key Issue: Data Privacy Reliability, and Security Despite reassurances, there is no permanent solution, no silver bullet. The only solution is to unplug IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 18
• 19. Recent Cyber Security News: • Google Chairman, Eric Schmidt’s new book on China: • “the world’s most active and enthusiastic filterer of information” as well as “the most sophisticated and prolific” hacker of foreign companies. In a world that is becoming increasingly digital, the willingness of China’s government and state companies to use cyber crime gives the country an economic and political edge. • NY Times, WSJ hacking last week traced to China • Twitter theft of 250K users personal information last week • Sony PlayStation Anonymous hacks (twice in 2 weeks) IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 19
• 20. Agenda • Some Historical Context • The Emergence of SoMoClo • The Emergence of Big Data • The Emergence of Smart Mobile • The Convergence of ToDaClo • What Do You Think? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not?
• 21. The Emergence of “Big Data” IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 21
• 22. Emergence of “Big Data” • Major advances in scale and sophistication of government intelligence gathering and analysis • Cost no object • NSA PRISM global telecom surveillance programPost 9/11 World IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 22
• 23. An Interesting Scientific Analogy Chaos, with reference to chaos theory, refers to an apparent lack of order in a system that nevertheless obeys particular laws or rules; this understanding of chaos is synonymous with dynamical instability, a condition discovered by the physicist Henri Poincare in the early 20th century that refers to an inherent lack of predictability in some physical systems. IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 23
• 24. Key Drivers of the Emergence of Big Data • Moore’s Law – compute cost and power • Design rules, multi-core, 3D design • Massive cost decline in data storage • Emergence of solid state memristor • Google Spanner 1st global real-time database • DARPA “Python” programming language • Data Center data storage accumulation • 2.7 zettabytes currently and growing rapidly • A zettabyte equals 1021 bytes (1000 exabytes) IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 24
• 25. The Big Data Landscape Today IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 25
• 26. The Key Issue: Privacy “Get over it! You have no privacy!” Scott McNealy, former CEO of Sun Microsystems IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 26
• 27. Agenda • Some Historical Context • The Emergence of SoMoClo • The Emergence of Big Data • The Emergence of Smart Mobile • The Convergence of ToDaClo • What Do You Think? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not?
• 28. The Emergence of Smart Mobile IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 28
• 29. Emergence of Smart Mobile IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 29
• 30. Key Drivers of Smart Mobile • Moore’s Law – compute cost and power • Design rules, multi-core, 3D design • Focus on reducing heat: gate leakage • Intel Atom “all day battery life” is a beginning • Massive cost decline in data storage • Mobile bandwidth:4G/LTE “no cost difference” • “White space” metro Wi-Fi potential maybe • New available spectrum between digital TV channels: increased transmit power • PC market death: Dell Computer & HP IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 30
• 31. Mobile-based Services • GPS, Cloud, personal and database info on mobile • Geotagging from current location tied to your objective: • Find merchandise, restaurant, bar, etc. • Find and tag people • Find people with similar interests nearby • The rise of the mobile gaming market • Already well-established in Hong Kong, Seoul • North America far behind Asian telecom markets • Facebook has just announced LBS plans • The downside: battery drain issue still critical • “People want their phones to do too much” • 4G LTE, Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS, Streaming, Mobile Gaming IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 31
• 32. Location-based Services Landscape IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 32
• 33. Agenda • Some Historical Context • The Emergence of SoMoClo • The Emergence of Big Data • The Emergence of Smart Mobile • The Convergence of ToDaClo • What Do You Think? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not?
• 34. The Convergence of “ToDaClo” Touch + Data + Cloud IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 34
• 35. David Mayes ‹#›
• 36. Agenda • Some Historical Context • The Emergence of SoMoClo • The Emergence of Big Data • The Emergence of Smart Mobile • The Convergence of ToDaClo • What Do You Think? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not?
• 37. Discussion: Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile, Big Deal or Not? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 37
• 38. My Key Takeaway Points • Even from the 50,000 foot level, a shakeout and consolidation seem inevitable • A lot of people are going to lose a lot of money • There will be “snake oil” sold that does not work • Nevertheless these three new markets are actually one unified market, and likely: The Next Big Thing IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 38
• 39. What Do You Think? • No. ToDaClo is mostly media hype, and not a “Big Deal.” • I’m skeptical. ToDaClo will probably be a “Big Deal,” but I haven’t seen much yet • Maybe. I do not know yet whether ToDaClo will be a Big Deal • Yes. ToDaClo is a Big Deal and it is already changing our lives IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 39
• 40. Thank You! IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 40
• 41. ©David Mayes 41

 

Big Data: Big Deal Or Not?

I have been having a spirited marathon debate with a couple of my friends.  Is this alleged new “Big Data thingy” so transformational that it will change our every day lives, or is it just an evolutionary advance that may improve productivity but not much else?  The same arguments may apply to the concept of “The Cloud,” and “Smart Mobile.”  The three, taken together, are coalescing into the major information technology forces that will drive innovation and productivity into the foreseeable future.

PollDaddy: What Is Your Opinion?  Big Data: Big Deal Or Not? Or Comment Below

We are hearing regularly in the media about so-called “Big Data.”  What exactly is Big Data? A number of differing definitions have been offered from a wide range of media sources. ZDNet‘s definition is one of the best I have seen so far.  In essence, big data is about liberating data that is large in volume, broad in variety and high in velocity from multiple sources in order to create efficiencies, develop new products and be more competitive. Forrester puts it succinctly in saying that big data encompasses “techniques and technologies that make capturing value from data at an extreme scale economical”  Prior to the emergence of commercial Big Data, the concept only existed where cost was no object: in the black world of the National Security Administration, and required the largest purpose-built supercomputers in existence.

A zettabyte (symbol ZB, derived from the SI prefix zetta-) is a quantity of information or information storage capacity equal to 10²¹ bytes or 1,000 exabytes (or one sextillion (one long scale trilliard) bytes).^{[1][2][3][4][5]…..I Billion terabytes….Today, you can walk into your local computer store and buy a couple of terabyes for a $100.  Only $500 Million for a zettabyte.  In real terms that is dirt cheap, and getting cheaper daily.   Now that we have that cleared up, we can move to the next level.}

With regard to the obvious issue of personal privacy, the European Union and other organizations have made efforts to protect privacy, with very mixed results.  Other governments, notably China, are aggressively implementing opposite policies to strictly limit privacy.  Highly sophisticated telecommunications equipment has been available for years that enables deep analysis of all of your voice and Internet traffic. We learned this when Dick Cheney secretly set up such equipment to track and record all voice and data traffic in the United States.  The equipment trapped and analyzed all of it in real time. You didn’t notice a thing.  The thing about your personal data is that they already have it. Most of it comes from public sources you authorized.   I not advocating this, I am only the messenger. The founder and former CEO of Sun Microsystems, Scott McNealy famously said, “You have no privacy. Get over it.”  We must not ignore the serious issue of privacy, but the problem is already here and deep data mining is thriving.  Privacy needs a revolution of its own.

The core question then becomes whether Big Data, and for that matter, the Cloud, and Smart Mobile, represent revolutionary and transformational changes in technological capability and also consequentially, human culture, politics: how we conduct ourselves in the World.  Or is it just so many more boring zeros and ones zooming by at the speed of light, stored in chips, and processed by quantum microprocessors?  No big deal, just IT management as normal.  Frankly, this is a significant philosophical question.  For this discussion, we will focus only on Big Data.   Discussion of the Cloud and Smart Mobile will follow later.  My most recent post on Smart Mobile gives a hint of my thoughts:  Mobile Market Share: A War of Titans Worth Following, http://mayo615.com/2013/01/21/mobile-os-market-share-strategy-war-of-the-titans-worth-following/

In fairness, I cut my teeth on Marshall McLuhan‘s ideas while in university in the 1960’s.  In an amazing irony, I soon fell into Intel Corporation at the birth of the microprocessor revolution, and later, I was also present to personally participate in the emergence of the personal computer. My memory of McLuhan kept popping up everywhere.   As my career progressed, I seemed to jump onto each new wave: networking at Sun Microsystems,  then the Internet infrastructure build out explosion with Ascend Communications, and finally a host of new companies, based on Internet-based capabilities.  Through all of it, I could only conclude that somehow McLuhan, like some kind of modern Nostradamus, had foreseen it all.   Most importantly, my own life was transformed by it all, and I saw with my own eyes the massive transformation occurring all around me.

So I have no doubt that Big Data is transforming our lives, and will continue to transform our lives, in ways we cannot yet fully grasp, as I could not grasp McLuhan when I first heard him, or the significance of the Internet as I sat right in the middle of it.

I have previously described Big Data as analogous to the evolution of Chaos Theory.  For centuries, full understanding of the complexity of nature’s designs were thought to be the realm of God, and beyond human comprehension and explanation.  Then in the 1960’s in places like Santa Cruz, California and Germany, the elegant simplicity of a solution to chaos began to emerge.  The massive scale of Big Data is a very similar nut to crack. We are now seeing an elite group of data scientists and mathematicians begin to solve Big Data in a way similar to how chaos was resolved.  Google, Microsoft Bing, Baidu, Yahoo and Amazon are driving the development of these mathematical skill sets.

Last year I showed my UBC Faculty of Management students a YouTube video on Data Mining. In the video, the two Hungarian mathematicians leading a data mining company, described how they had solved hideously complex problems that were previously beyond any computational solution. The key to their success was their ability to extract very precise useful information from extraordinarily large stores of information.  The metaphor here is more like finding a particular grain of sand on a very large beach.  A parallel key factor has been the incessant march of Moore’s Law.  Even 10 years ago, successful data mining on this scale could not have been accomplished. The computational cycles and high speed mass storage were not available or were too expensive.   Today those microprocessor cycles are available.  The costs will continue to plummet, making further advances inevitable. Failure to consider Moore’s Law and available computational cycles has also been the cause of many failed ideas over the years. But the threshold has arrived.

Today, developments like Google Spanner, the largest known database architecture in the World, have joined with the computational solutions.

Unveiled this fall after years of hints and rumors, it’s the first worldwide database worthy of the name — a database designed to seamlessly operate across hundreds of data centers and millions of machines and trillions of rows of information.

Spanner is a creation so large, some have trouble wrapping their heads around it. But the end result is easily explained: With Spanner, Google can offer a web service to a worldwide audience, but still ensure that something happening on the service in one part of the world doesn’t contradict what’s happening in another.

Google’s decision to reveal Spanner has many dimensions.  First, it provides a peek into the black World of the U.S.  National Security Agency and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.  Previously, the existence of such large and sophisticated global databases were only imagined. We now know they exist and are a crucial component of Big Data.

Read more in my post, Google Spanner, the single largest database in the world

http://mayo615.com/2012/11/26/inside-google-spanner-the-single-largest-database-in-the-world/

For me, the most compelling example of how this all works, has been the extremely sophisticated Big Data mining used by the Obama campaign to achieve re-election. As early as March 2012, the Wall Street Journal began reporting about “Dashboard,”  the Obama campaign app that was mining Big Data to find undecided voters in key states.  But not only undecided voters.  Dashboard can key in, find and persuade “Off the Grid” voters.  Off the Grid is the term used to describe those people, such as students and other young people, with constantly changing locations and only a mobile phone.  These voters have historically been virtually impossible to reach.  This short PBS Newshour video below speaks volumes about the extraordinary impact and value of Big Data, not seen before.

Watch How Much Do Digital Campaigns Know About You? on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

The campaign’s hiring of Rayid Ghani, as “chief data scientist,” and an army of data analysts, set the stage for what was to come.  On election night, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan were absolutely convinced that they had won the election, but were shocked to find otherwise. Working through their disbelief, both candidates later remarked about the enormous voter turnout for Democrats in key locations and the “technology advantage” of the Obama campaign.

So from my years of observation of the march of technology and its impact on my own life, I am convinced that we are entering another transformational period as profound as the emergence of the Internet itself.

I have been repeatedly drawn back to Steve Job’s 2005 Stanford University commencement address, in which he closes with references to Stuart Brand and The Whole Earth Catalog. Stuart Brand is an extraordinary futurist.  One of Ken Kesey’s original Merry Prankster’s chronicled in Tom Wolfe’s book non-fiction novel, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Brand had been inspired by the legendary first photograph of the entire Earth taken by Apollo 8 astronaut Frank Borman.  Brand is also the founder of The Well,  the very early Sausalito-based Internet Service Provider, who is now considered one of the most important thinkers on human culture, technology and its impacts.  Word of Job’s commencement address spread virally around the Valley...”Did you hear what Job’s said at Stanford today?”    Steve was basically saying that he too understood what McLuhan had said, and that Stuart Brand also understood the transformational importance of the Global Village, by publishing The Whole Earth Catalog.

In Memoriam: Aaron Swartz, Internet Activist, RSS Pioneer, and Co-Founder of Reddit

Aaron Swartz, Internet Visionary Has Left Us

UPDATE

Tweet from (Sir) Tim Berners-Lee on the death of Aaron Swartz”  “Aaron dead. World wanderers, we have lost a wise elder. Hackers for right, we are one down. Parents all, we have lost a child. Let us weep.” And the web wept.

Today the blogosphere and media have lit up with tributes and obituaries to Aaron Swartz: not least of these include The Economist Magazine “Babbage” editorial page, and The Harvard Business Review blog

Read more, Babbage, The Economist:  http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/01/remembering-aaron-swartz?fsrc=nlw|newe|1-14-2013|4609454|34901933|NA

 Read more, HBR blog:   http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/01/aaron_swartzs_crime_and_the_bu.html

ORIGINAL POST

Only 26 years old, Aaron Swartz took his own life late last week.  Swartz was an Internet intellectual giant, recognized as such since his early teenage years..  We have lost a second generation Internet visionary..someone who could have helped us get to the next level of The Global Village..

At the age of 14, Swartz was credited with inventing RSS, known as “rich site summary,” a format for delivering to users content from sites that change constantly, such as news pages and blogs. We all use it.

The problem was that the powers that want corporate control the Internet did not like Aaron.. They want us to pay big corporations big bucks and they see the Internet as a threat to their power.  I personally view Swartz’ suicide as an existential act of immense courage, making the ultimate statement with his life, screaming at us that we need to “wake the fuck up”  as Samuel L. Jackson screamed at us in his viral video, during the US Presidential campaign.

Swartz faced trouble in July 2011, when he was indicted by a federal grand jury of wire fraud, computer fraud and other charges related to allegedly stealing millions of academic articles and journals from a digital archive at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

According to the federal indictment, Swartz – who was a fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J Safra Center for Ethics – used MIT’s computer networks to steal more than 4 million articles from JSTOR, an online archive and journal distribution service. JSTOR did not press charges against Swartz after the digitised copies of the articles were returned, according to media reports at the time.  So why did the US Attorney insist on driving Aaron to commit suicide?

Swartz, who pleaded not guilty to all counts, faced 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine if convicted. He was released on bond. His trial was scheduled to start later this year.  Many legal scholars who have studied the case,  have described the US federal prosecution as a travesty, and out of all proportion to the facts..

Most importantly, if the United States views the Internet as a strategic national security resource, they completely fucked up by forcing the suicide of one of its most important new geniuses. You can’t get more fucked up than that. 

On Saturday, online tributes to Swartz flooded across cyberspace. “Aaron had an unbeatable combination of political insight, technical skill and intelligence about people and issues,” Cory Doctorow, Canadian blogger and science fiction writer, co-editor of the weblog Boing Boing, wrote on the site. Doctorow wrote that Swartz had “problems with depression for many years.”  Depression, mood swings and even bipolar disorder are commonly associated with extremely bright people.

We lost Steve Jobs.. Now we have lost Aaron as well.  He could have been our next generation Marshall McLuhan, showing us the way…. But it was not to happen.  I am so angry I could spit.

 

Marshall McLuhan Was At Least Half Right

As an undergraduate student of Speech-Communication, I vividly recall learning about Marshall McLuhan, and the day we all watched the short video The Global Village,   a short kaleidoscopic film, and read the very brief pictorial paperback book, “The Medium is the Message,”multiple times.  Both were way ahead of their time.  These were heady times in the academic world.  As this was at least 15 years before the advent of the Internet, we were all grasping at the profundity of what McLuhan was saying to us….not realizing that this guy was predicting the World Wide Web.. Holy Shit!   We tried reading his books but found that they were so dense as to be impossible to read… What we could “sorta” get was “the medium was the message” visual representation and that weird little book..  I recall thinking that what McLuhan was saying was so cool, and chuckling about it, though I still could not fully grasp it.. I was experiencing the “cosmic giggle” that became the tag line for Rolling Stone magazine at that time.  And then, of course, Woody Allen immortalized McLuhan, by putting him into that scene in Annie Hall, where McLuhan walks up and tells the guy next to Allen and Diane Keaton, that he is completely full of shit, and understands nothing about his work. Whew!

Today, I look back on that time, struggling with McLuhan’s vision, and shake my head in utter awe..  It was as if we were sitting at the feet of Einstein desperately trying to explain relativity to us, and we just couldn’t quite get it.

We certainly get it now. Marshall McLuhan is my personal choice for intellectual giant of the second half of the 20th Century. This gives full due credit to Einstein.

But something interesting is happening with the Medium and the Global Village. It is bifurcating, at least for now.  The World Wide Web is continuing on its happy way, morphing over and over again as we go, now becoming only three important threads: The Cloud, Big Data, and Smart Mobile…The efforts of China, Iran, North Korea and others to control the Web, in my view, and the view of others, may be pathetic wastes of time, effort, money and technology. On the other hand it could be the beginning of “balkanization” of the Internet.  The Berlin Wall came down and the Great Wall is nothing more than a tourist attraction.  Efforts to stop the Web may be like King Canute trying to stop the waves, or it may be the beginning of a new Internet era.  But nothing else matters anymore, and for now nothing can stop it.

But on the more tangible side, financial, economic and political globalization things are retrograde.  The Economist this week reported that the World is less economically connected than it was in 2007, indeed less than it was in 2005.  It is an extraordinary contrast with the evolution of the WWW.  The Global Interconnectedness Index, rather like the index of consumer confidence, is reporting that people around the World believe that we are more globally interconnected economically than we actually are. Foreign Direct Investment is way down, and my guess is that it may not recover soon.. A whole raft of global political issues are beginning to emerge that are restraining economic globalization, rather like mercantilism in the 18th Century and how it evolved and morphed over time.

The World is not yet ready.. Years ago, the University of California at Santa Cruz had a graduate program entitled The History of Consciousness, led by Professor Cesar Grana. I met with Professor Grana at the time, and was fascinated at his approach to McLuhan’s vision.  Everything is connected: art, science, music, theology, and it has evolved as the human race has evolved.

What we have with the current pull back from economic globalization is the fact that the human race is simply not ready to embrace a complete Global Village.  We are on the edges of it with World Music, and the World Wide Web, but it appears that full economic and political realization of Stuart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog....as described by Steve Job’s in his now famous 2005 commencement address at Stanford…is just not here yet, though some of us have been waiting for years.  Jobs passed on and some of us may as well before this chapter is closed.

As Steve Jobs told us, the last edition of the Whole Earth Catalog advised us to “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”