5 Web and Tech Innovations of The Previous Decade (2000-2010)

Innovation can fundamentally change the world in a matter of years, while culture, economy and technology can constantly shape the world to better accommodate products, ideas and tools that lead to innovation.

I believe this decade we have been more receptive to change, while at the same time, change has been more accessible and had a deeper impact on people living anywhere on Earth. We still have a lot of problems left to solve, from past innovations that we didn’t understand or use efficiently. The following list of revolutionary things is not ordered, no hierarchy is implied. Enjoy and share it with your friends!

1. Tablet Computers

Although the touchscreen technology for commercial use is more than 2 decades old, the more recent tablet computers got the best of it with the launch of Apple’s iPad last year. Tablet computers revolutionized the whole idea of “user experience” and redefined human-computer interaction, making it a more intimate and intuitive experience, while also challenging designers and developers create more usable and responsive interfaces for applications, games, browsers and websites. With tablet computers, interaction is built around natural gestures and control is manifested directly, through touch, not through peripheral input devices that require users acquire new skills to use them. Interestingly, RSS readers and aggregators became more popular with these devices, which are mainly for people who consume, rather than create content.

Chinese New Year Smartphone

Originally uploaded by Mr. T in DC

2. Smartphones

Although entered a viable market viable during the previous decade, the breakthrough of accessible, usable and fun-to-use smartphones happened in 2007-2009 when the first touchscreen mobile devices, with integrated cameras, web browsers and mobile apps caught the attention of a very responsive population. Surely the rise of smartphones was strongly conditioned by the release of functional, user-oriented, intuitive operating systems and applications. For the past three years smartphones have facilitated above-average growth in global handset shipment. The 3G revolution happened instantaneously, giving mobile carriers and internet providers new reasons to attract and retain customers. Nowadays, people do not choose voice and data plans, they choose devices with great interfaces and open platforms (ability to add third party applications).

3. Webapps

I love it when absolutely intangible things become the killer products of the year. Webapps are makeshift because they add fast, real-time computational capabilities to devices that have traditionally been considered static receptors on which third party clients would plant their own little software to do the job. Webapps can be perfect cash cows for start-ups and established tech companies, as well as excellent market catalysts and trend setters. From analytics to social media sharing, from organizers to productivity enhancing tools, webapps reflect the market trends and create more opportunities for faster, more performant web products to be developed over time.

4. Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is revolutionary as a tech business model and as a framework for development companies, especially those who have adopted agile methods. Cloud computing helps businesses convert capital expenditure into operational expenditure and prepare the market for subscription-based plans that allow savvy customers access vital data about their own business, accounts and about the competition for limited or unlimited periods of time. Cloud computing makes it easier for business owners to scale up rapidly and reach out to markets globally. Cloud computing is an epitome of green capitalism: the value created can greatly overshadow the initial resources invested.

5. Social Media

Social Marketing Compass by Brian Solis and JESS3

Originally uploaded by b_d_solis

It is pervasive, it is fun, it is insightful and it can be integrated with business and marketing strategy, media and social campaigns. People may still be apprehensive of using social media and may not understand why it would change the way they do things. Ten years ago the adoption of social media sharing tools on one’s website to drive in visitors and communicate with broader audiences online is something that no marketer would have thought of before the rise of online social networking. Today, social media channels use APIs to become more profoundly embedded with all the other web products and entities.

Soon it will become invisible and therefore part of our lives and of everything we do.

What I think is absolutely amazing about social media is that it helped people connect outside the choreographed media environment: from Barack Obama reaching out to people during the course of the 2008 U.S. election cycle to users reporting about different events in real time, thus providing a different, inside-look at what was really happening; from starts and celebrities revealing things about themselves directly to tens of thousands of followers to thought leaders making statements that would influence public opinion – that is the real power of social media and that is what connection is all about in a world still divided by material and immaterial boundaries.

There are several other revolutionary things, web and tech related, and even more outside these two extremely dynamic environments of our world today. One of the books I look forward to read is Open Services Innovation by Henry Chesbrough. I have already enjoyed reading Open Innovation last year. I think the SaS business model will dominate the rising markets for the next few years. Again, I think this decade’s legacy is not entirely free of dangers and there are so many hundreds of years old problems we continue to struggle with, but I hope that responsibility and empathy will get the best of us and we will manage to drive sustainable innovation and create a brighter and safer future to live in.

Curiosity and Achievement

 

Self study at study

Originally uploaded by Hermés

Curiosity is a trait that we share with animals, so there must have been a strong reason from an evolutionary perspective for trait to be selected times and times again among various species. It’s obvious that the most common manifestation of curiosity is something that can be observed in one’s behavior, most of the time it’s similar to a spontaneous action – triggered by stimuli that do not match with a familiar context. Obviously, there are many other different manifestations of curiosity, such as interest and attention. But the most interesting manifestation of curiosity – from my point of view – is ambition.

I do not go into arguing about the distinction between personality traits (curiosity) and character traits (ambition) – which are more refined by cultural influences throughout one’s life. I assume that the spectrum of a person individuality is composed of rich, nuanced traits that become more and more prominent as the person chooses to define herself in certain general terms like – being ambitious, caring, conservative and so on.

I think curiosity is a very dynamic trait, causing behaviors, attitudes and emotions that are not always thought to be the products of curiosity. Sometimes I observe people that are very attached to their goals, pursuing something with the passion and determination. I find that to be the attitude of a very curious person. We can all imagine what it would be like “if…” we did something or found out something new; but we often stop at this point, doubting that the effort of actually doing that is worth it. What happens in the mind of curious people is that imagination is not sufficient. They want to know and feel what it is like for themselves. And they are curious about all the little things connected to their goal. For example fashion designers might be curious about photography, about people and art in general, but also about history , entertainment and movies – because all these subjects reveal details about fashion and clothing as well. They are into all these things and people assume their ambition has something to do with them having a very strong will.

I assume curiosity alone can feed a mind with the drive it takes to accomplish things greater than one’s life.

Making things happen, being ambitious and perfecting oneself involves being able to capture and use so much information over time. What else facilitates this better than curiosity? Wouldn’t people stop or at least be “fed up” if they wouldn’t be curious enough about what they are doing or about to do?

I find this subject especially appealing for anybody who wants to study the relationship between achievement and curiosity on one hand, and achievement and self-discipline on the other.

I think that would be a tight “competition”.

Yeah, I’d like to see that…

Life as a huge goldfish

If reality had a memory of its own and a sense of things developing into the future, maybe that could be comparable to what we, people, can actually do.

Reality is more like a story. Everything has a past, deeply engrained in the current state of being, and a future, along the lines of what everything was programmend to be like: organisms come to life, objects interact and transition to other states, whithin certain limits. But people – they get inspired, they want to change, create, feel, intensify, generate, produce and transform.

If my daring statement is kindly accepted by my readers, I could say that mankind is s deeply transforming, creative and intense force in the universe. By the power of emotions, goals and intellect, people can define this reality in wways that can be either beneficial or temporarily distructive.

Humankind can shape its own universe: culture, technology and economy add to that and it is a pity to see how some of us cannot see beyond certain limits. There is no bigger picture for them, they live within a very closedchain of reactions, goals and expectations, a chain that levels down pople’s actual potential and power to do things.

There are things that I dislike about this world: like the huge buidlings with cubicles where people are underpaid and conditioned to accept things that shouldn’t be called job responibilities at all; like big corporations thriving on other people’s work when the work/ compensation ratio is tremendously skewed for the sole benefit of the owners.

I do not think that those people have the freedom to choose. I don’t think most of the people actually do have that. Freedom is preconditioned by a lot of things nowadays, although it shouldn’t be. Like – everyone should have everything they need to live well and get by every day. Then they can work on their freedom and exercise their skills to produce the same amount os goods and services they consume.

It used to be that having a family would allow you to do just that, but I’m pretty sure that a certain pervasive trend in our capitalist global society to sell illusions and essentially useless goods makes it very difficult for some people to reach a point in their life where they understand this balance between consumption and production.

To close it up, we can do awesome things . That is one of the most fascinating things about human beings. It would be a pity to waste our lives or condition others waste their lives on irrelevant things.

I guess this should apply in business too: if you are responsible about what you are doing and try to generate more value over the goods and services you consume, then it is worth it. Otherwise, I don’t want to care about your campaigns and marry-go-round tricks.

You can be bigger than that. Productivity and self-awareness make life a huge goldfish.

Trying Gmail Priority Inbox

Today I activated the new Gmail Priority feature for my inbox. I feel like it was about time it happened and it’s one of the few things I would click on, install/activate and be like “Oh, you came right on time.”

Gmail Priority Inbox

I feel the new Prioritized inbox will be more organized now and I feel like it does a lot of things, especially combined with tagging and filters use. Even the pic Google has in their Getting started e-mail is the right on spot. Goodbye gray and black e-mails – hello ordered. Stacked and prioritized messages.

One of the things I felt when I started to select and ascribe a priority tag to my e-mails was – from now on it will be easier for me to be more aware of how things are running and how I communicate with people. I don’t use to do lists to schedule talking or replying to people, but I feel that now it will be easier for me to note whether I received or not a really important answer or not and when.

So – what’s your opinion about the Gmail Priority Inbox and what other uses did you find related to it?

THE PUBLIC RESOURCES DILEMMA

+many thanks to Michael Tuck for sharing his thoughts on Ayn Rand

Unrestricted access to public goods and resources: this is one issue that researchers have tried to address several times, by modelling and predicting the behavior of the masses in game like situations – altogether known as “The Public Resources dilemma”. Theoretically, there wouldn’t be such a thing as unrestricted access. Communities naturally create, enforce and conform to various rules – even when words like unrestricted, unlimited and free are used… generously.

Game theory has shown that, in the Public Goods Dilemma or similar game-like situations, most people naturally tend to form two distinctive groups, with predictable patterns of behavior: first, there are people who tend to take hold of everything (especially if it’s “free”) and always try to benefit as much as possible from their “share” and even try to get more than it would be possible, if all available resources would be shared equally. They usually play out dominant strategies, until they are seriously reprimanded or until restrictions and penalties are established.

Commented on “Change This Blog”

Should it be a matter of choice, there would be more self-proclaimed creativists than high-end products&services consumers. The excess offer and the marketing war created therein may easily trash the whole canvass of individual values and standards. Let thy be creative regardless of what s/he consumes in this wicked and fast paced economy!

Originally posted as a comment
by katchja
on Change This Blog using DISQUS.

Attraction

The power of attraction.

A world without attraction is nothing but a messed up Tower of Babylon.

It’s one of the few genuine things that happen to us and take hold of our actions and thoughts, direct and give meaning to what we do, make us go through hell, come back, take a nap and then climb our way to heaven.

Even in marketing, PR and advertising, attraction is a powerful tool used on the masses. How can you resist what attracts you? You wait until time makes it easier for you to handle the emotions that seem to possess your behavior.

Unconsciously, attraction to others or other things will make your free-will mean NOTHING. As unreasonable as it is, attraction is NOT a primitive psychological mechanism. Do you really think your psyche would be so focused on something based on primitive motives like… the need to survive and reproduce? Isn’t this a bit too simplistic and quite unfair? Just because its so powerful and apparently irrational, attraction shouldn’t be dismissed as primitive, immature or unreasonable.