Man makes good ...

In a faltering economy, someone is always smiling. Thanks to Kevin for spotting this.

Madhouse ...

Back in May last year, I had my usual election grumble about the lack of secrecy over whom we vote for. Technically it's a secret as long as two lists of numbers are kept apart, however if necessary your voting history can be recovered.

What shocked me at the time was to discover that plans were afoot to have a new mechanism of ID checking, something which had been reported earlier by the Times. I was left with the clearest hint that this would mean our voluntary ID cards.

Of course, if the contractors involved in the ID cards fiasco keep on losing other peoples data then I might well find myself turning up to the booth to discover I've already voted. At least they will be able to tell me whom I voted for.

Now continuing on that point, I recently heard of a political reform idea which brings idiocy to a whole new level. The idea is that "companies should have the right to vote". There is quite enough gerrymandering going on via lobbyists without extending the right to vote to organisations.

An organisation only exists at the intersection between a mass of activities and people. Without people and activities, organisations don't exist. Since people already vote, there is no reason on earth why random collections of people should be given extra votes. It's bonkers.

Unfortunately so are ID cards, but that hasn't seemed to stop them yet.

Something most foul ...

I don't appreciate being told what to do or being nannied over my excess weight, however I do appreciate being given clear information in order to make sensible choices.

I mention this because the Tory party has not only been berating people for carrying a few extra pounds, but has also joined forces with the Food and Advertising Industry in order to remove the traffic light system for food labelling. This simple system provides consumers with easy to read information about a food product and whether it contains high, medium or low levels of fat, saturates, sugars and salt.

Instead the industry favours a system of unreadable and potentially confusing percentages. This is no surprise as it's the governments job to make sure we get clear information and the role of advertisers to convince us to buy stuff. By hook or by crook or as I like to call it, the lynx effect - we suggest you'll attract beautiful women, we deliver a dubious whiff.

Now a "dubious whiff" is by pure coincidence an apt description of these recent Tory policies, however when it comes to helping the elderly rich in favour of the poor, well that's downright rancid.

The obvious dangers of the cloud ...

We've had numerous instances of downtime, changes in TOCs and services disappearing in the cloud computing world. To this list of shenanigans can now be added Nings unilateral closing of WidgetLaboratory.

I'm not going to go on a rant about the need for open sourced standards to protect the interest of businesses built upon such services, because both James Urquhart and those smart guys at Reasonably Smart have already said what needs to be said.

It seems that Reasonably Smart are also planning to raise further investment. If you're looking at getting into the cloud computing space, I'd strongly recommend you talk to them. To be open in my dealings, I know James Duncan very well but I have no vested interest in the company; I just happen to strongly agree with what they are doing.

I want to clearly emphasise one important point. The value of large scale utility computing provider of a JavaScript based application platform can be measured in the tens of millions. By following an open source route, the value of the technology is in effect zero. However, the potential value of a marketplace of utility computing providers based upon an open sourced standard (with revenues from utility sales, switching services, maintenance contracts, brokerages and exchanges) can be measured in the tens of billions.

If I had the cash I'd invest in the company myself, unfortunately I don't. They have a reasonably good chance, with a little bit of luck and support, in hitting the big time.

Finally, I'm overjoyed to see this post by Tony Lucas (the guy behind FlexiScale) on the importance of Interoperability and Portability in the cloud computing world. I couldn't agree more, and I believe that FlexiScale (at the infrastructure layer of the software stack) and Reasonablysmart.com (at the platform or framework layer of the software stack) have the potential to be real game changers in this service world.

To James Duncan and Tony Lucas, fortune favours the brave ... I'm cheering for you both.

The shape of things to come ...

Every year, for over seven years, I used to write reports and presentations on the future of 3D printing. I was never very successful at pushing this idea forward in the companies I worked with and occasionally I found myself a lone voice on the disruptive nature of this technology.

The very idea that people would in the future manufacture their own products was generally considered unlikely. I happened to disagree but then that's the real issue with breakthrough innovations (as opposed to radical and incremental), it's full of uncertainty and no-one has the answers. By the time that a trend seems likely, then it's well on the path to becoming commonplace. As any bookie will tell you, there has always been a inverse relationship between the future value of something and the certainty we have about it.

Today, the Philips spin-off Shapeways is creating a compelling case for a future of personal manufactured items and the mere fact that a company such as Philips is testing the waters is interesting in itself. Of course Shapeways (see the video below) deals purely with physical design and doesn't yet allow the creation of hybrid objects containing both electronic and physical structure. Since the technology to create such hybrids has existed since 2004, it should be interesting to see how they develop the service.

Whilst 3D printing has yet to become a hot activity like web 2.0, enterprise 2.0 and concepts like cloud computing, such activities are hot precisely because they are becoming more well defined, understood and more common. The decline in the future differential value of such activities to a business goes hand in hand with the growth of industries delivering such products and services as volume operations. Eventually these activities will become commonplace, commodity-like and considered to be little more than a cost of doing business. The use of 3D printing techniques to manufacture personal objects is already on the path to becoming common and though its impact on society will take time, the effect will be profound. It's not hot yet, but it will be soon.

When trying to spot future trends (a fools errand at the best of times), the focus is not on the hot but instead that which is rare, uncertain, has potential and is often dismissed as impossible. The focus is on the unlikely and uncertain.

The future trends that I take a personal interest in concern the fields of biological manufacturing, biological energy production and the creation of new languages which describe both digital and physical form.

Will they become hot? ... who knows ... I think so, but then that's uncertainty for you.

Shapeways

By the pricking of my thumbs ...

... something silent this way comes.

I'm guessing that the creators of the silent electric sports car capable of 125mph are expecting us all to develop a supernatural sixth sense in order to avoid being knocked down.

Silent cars ... supernatural powers ... fiendishly evil, if you ask me. I'd suggest ducking the inventors and if they float .. well, burn 'em, they're witches!

It's a hard knock life ...

Debt exceeds GDP, inflation exceeds interest rates and the future is one of a fairly chunky correction. That's normal, that's what should be expected as we've been living beyond our means ever since debt controls were relaxed and the Government of that day starting flogging the silverware in order to provide tax breaks (Milton's Folly).

Some folks want us to reduce interest rates in order to encourage more spending and prop up this debt ridden economy. This should be no surprise as the alternative is a realisation that debt has to eventually be repaid and our over-pricing of assets, such as housing, doesn't actually create real wealth.

The logic of interest rate cuts is based upon an assumption that the current inflation levels are very short-term and that somehow growth in the future will overcome our debt issues. This is akin to the desperate poker player placing ever larger bets in the hope that their luck will change.

The rude awakening is that we need to manage inflation, increase interest rates & taxation as is necessary and be prepared to accept the likelihood of recession, repossessions and stringent Government cost control. Whilst we can't let the banking system fail, there is no reason why it shouldn't be in public ownership and we really need to stop propping up a failing private system.

Whilst the reckless behaviour of the financial sector is culpable for much of the failure, if you're looking for someone to blame then the chances are a mirror is a good bet. Many of us have been complicit in the consumer debt culture and the easy money of the housing boom; dropping interest rates isn't going to help us overcome our addiction.

When you're in a hole, the first thing you need to do is to stop digging.

Completely quackers ...

A friend of mine, Tony Fish, kindly forwarded this joke to me. It obviously made me laugh and seeing that I have forty ducks running around the garden (along with eight Morhens, six Pheasants, the occasional Heron and the even more occasional Stag), I can understand the problem of duck avoidance.

Tales from the Duck side ...

Three women die together in an accident and go to heaven. When they get there, St. Peter says,

"We only have one rule here in heaven: don't step on the ducks!"

So they enter heaven, and sure enough, there are ducks all over the place. It is almost impossible not to step on a duck, and although they try their best to avoid them, the first woman accidentally steps on one. Along comes St. Peter with the ugliest man she ever saw. St. Peter chains them together and says,

"Your punishment for stepping on a duck is to spend eternity chained to this ugly man!"

The next day, the second woman accidentally steps on a duck and along comes St. Peter, who doesn't miss a thing. With him is another extremely ugly man. He chains them together with the same admonishment as for the first woman.

The third woman has observed all this and, not wanting to be chained for all eternity to an ugly man, is very, VERY careful where she steps. She manages to go months without stepping on any ducks, but one day St. Peter comes up to her with the most handsome man she has ever laid eyes on ... very tall, long eyelashes, muscular, and thin. St. Peter chains them together without saying a word.

The happy woman says,

"I wonder what I did to deserve being chained to you for all of eternity?"

The guy says,

"I don't know about you, but I stepped on a duck!"

If no-one has the answer ...

... where are the good sources of information?

Well, the problem with information sources in any emerging field is usually one of independence. Whilst many sites may talk about the subject, there is always the danger that you are being led to a specific conclusion: buy our product, research report or consultancy services.

As with most things in life, you should always take advice with a good pinch of salt unless there are compelling reasons to believe in the independence of the source or you have some personal trust relationship with the source.

Whilst there are many experts in the field, these are the people that I most strongly trust the opinions of:-

Enterprise 2.0: Euan Semple, Jenny Ambrozek, Andrew McAfee and Dion Hinchcliffe.

Cloud Computing: James Urquhart, Jesse Robbins, Artur Bergman and Rich Miller.

Social Media & Networks: Suw Charman-Anderson, Tara Hunt and Gavin Bell.

Future Technology: Tim O'Reilly, Matt Webb, James Duncan and Cory Doctorow.

This, of course, is simply my view. It's neither right nor wrong but instead a reflection of those things that matter to me.

Your view is probably completely different but then that's the beauty of freedom, participation and expression in the Internet age. No-one has the answers to an uncertain future and you have to decide where the good sources of information are. Don't let others make those decisions for you.

That said, there are some good people out there trying to bring you independent resources for information on particular subjects. Two of my favourites include the E2.0 portal by Simon Oxley and Nick Barker and Enterprise 2.0 Open by Bjoern Negelmann et al.

Who has the answer ....

I was recently asked for "answers" on how to implement web 2.0 and enterprise 2.0. I, like many others, can hazard a guess to a sensible course of action depending upon the company, but at this moment in time there are no answers merely informed guesses or what is commonly called recommendations.

Whilst web 2.0 and enterprise 2.0 are not new fields, the technology having been used in commercial settings for many years now, it is still emergent.

What this means, is that we are still learning. This is particularly true when it comes to enterprise 2.0 because you're dealing with a complex network of people (which we barely understand), operating in an environment containing a mass of changing activities (which often we barely understand) into which we are introducing tools that expose new mechanisms of communication, collaboration, componentisation and participation (for which we barely understand the effect or the most suitable means of management).

Some activities are common and well defined and hence we can provide ideal mechanisms of control. However, unfortunately, those which are common and well defined are of declining strategic value due to their ubiquity in an industry. The hypothesis is that there exists an inverse relationship between the certainty about which we know something and its potential future value - a sort of uncertainty principle of future business value.

So genres of activities which are highly uncertain (such as web 2.0 and enterprise 2.0) have high potential future value. Unfortunately by the time that we have all the information, case studies, best practices and research to tell you the best way of achieving this value, the activity is ubiquitous and common and therefore has little.

I mention this because I have recently seen people touting themselves not only as subject matter experts in these field but also setting themselves up as gurus and offering answers.

As with the best snake oil traditions of the past, such claims are founded on weak evidence and you should be glad it is. When it comes to creating value, you need to be experimenting and anyone playing in these fields is just as likely to make the big break as anyone else.

No-one has all the answers to web 2.0 and enterprise 2.0 yet, which is why these subjects still matter.

We can see what you're upto ...

We might not yet have our plethora of open sourced standards and compliance authorities, but we're starting to see more and more monitoring services appear for the cloud.

Merv swerves but will weebles wobble?

The primary objective of the monetary policy committee is to deliver price stability which means low inflation. Secondary to this, its objective is to support the Government’s economic goals.

Unfortunately there is a lot of pressure (by vested interests) on Merv "the swerve" et al. to consider dropping interest rates at a time when they are running behind an inflation rate that is still growing.

Personally, I think Merv has done a grand job (except for the swerve) and the blame for current crisis is firmly with the city. Despite all the caterwauling this is not the time for the MPC to wobble from its prime directive.