Social media and Enterprise 2.0

There is a much deeper application of Web 2.0 technologies and concepts possible in the enterprise than is currently being contemplated and implemented. Some companies have an early effort to use some of the tools but have not noticed that the concepts themselves can be applied to generate significant benefit. Worse, misapplication is also occurring such as the creation of Social Media Officers oblivious to the bottom-up rather than top-down property of social media.

Future of social media
The long-term future of social media is lifelogging - the auto-capture and permissioned auto-posting or archiving of every person’s every thought and experience. Feedhavior’s digital footprints continue to drive individual actions. The corporation goes away. Artificial intelligence becomes the most efficient form of outsourcing. People and organizations spend more time in simulation worlds than physical worlds. Entrepreneurs and organizations provide goods and services by making offerings proactively to groups of potential customers aggregated through their web-based interest communities. Marketing must be relevant to avoid being perceived as advertising.


Applying Web 2.0 Technologies to the Enterprise
There is no part of the firm at present that cannot make use of Web 2.0 and social media technologies. There are two dimensions for application:

External and Internal
Externally, a firm can use Web 2.0 and social media technologies for branding, re-inventing and testing business models, product and service sales, customer relationship management (CRM), partner ecosystem management, R&D outsourcing and recruiting. Internally, firms can use Web 2.0 and social media technologies for communication, collaboration, work assignment, task and project management, resource allocation and performance feedback.

Tools, Concepts and Values
Some examples of the direct application of social media and Web 2.0 tools are using blogs to supplement or replace marketing, APIs to supplement or replace business development, and crowdsourcing ideagoras to supplement or replace R&D. Applying concepts is for example not just using Digg for the firm’s industry news feeds but Digg functionality to bid up and down work assignments or performance feedback. Using Web 2.0 in the enterprise is not using mash-ups but mashing up internal applications, putting a virtual world front-end on any data application to represent the information in a high-resolution way. Internal trainings and meetings are conducted as open space unconferences. Everyone can participate in everything.

The values of social media are also applied internally and externally: authenticity, openness, transparency, participation, creativity, perpetual beta, new linkages, asking the wisdom of crowds (web, twitter), acknowledgement that everyone can have good ideas and contribute and using freemium and open-source business models (free + fee-based).

21 century skillsets: the new literacy

Almost no one in the traditional education world, in both K-12 schools and higher educational institutions, has noticed the new literacy.

Not only is there a necessity to be more generally technically literate, but

the educated person of today must be able to read, write and express thoughts in a variety of technology-based media

MIT’s Neil Gershenfeld notices “From a combination of passion and inventiveness I sense that students are reinventing literacy. Literacy has been boiled down to reading and writing, but the means have changed since the Renaissance. In a very real sense post-digital literacy now includes 3D machining and microcontroller programming.” (Source: a paraphrase of Gershenfeld's Edge interview)

This should really be extended to say that the new literacy includes expression in traditional writing and in computer software, 3d printing, virtual worlds, video games, synthetic biology and visual storytelling.

Does everyone have to excel at expressing themselves in each of these media? No, but the most effective people are able to communicate through multiple forms of media.

An interesting analysis would be in evaluating the types of expression that are possible in each of the media. How is the same idea different in writing, in software, in 3d animation? Which media are better in which cases? Imagine the assignment to create a representation of yourself through biology, by assembling DNA sequences for different actions from the Registry of Standard Biological Parts database.

There has never been such an explosion of venues for creativity and self-expression. The result is very exciting – a richer interconnectedness of humanity and a new level of collaboration opportunities as more people can now connect through their user-generated content.

Next steps for virtual worlds

Interest in virtual worlds is growing, platforms are proliferating and virtual commerce continues to rise but there are several key steps needs to reach the next level: expanding awareness of virtual worlds uses, providing technical interoperability and establishing a financial payment network.

1. Marketing - virtual worlds are not just for recreation
Conceptually, there is a marketing problem. The popular belief, even by technology professionals, is that virtual worlds are exclusively for recreational use, and even more narrowly, that they are children's video games. This stems from three factors: the vast popularity of teen and pre-teen virtual worlds, the fact that this market segment is making the most money in the virtual worlds space and some high profile acquisitions like Club Penguin by Disney in Aug. 2007 for $700m. Maybe this is what happened with the wheel in Peru; it got defined as a children's toy early on and the greater extensibility of the technology went unrealized.

Enterprise Virtual Worlds
Virtual worlds are the natural evolution of the Internet and one of the biggest potential uses is for enterprise applications. Enterprise virtual world killer app #1 is videoconferencing. Companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars annually on video-conferencing. This can all be replaced with the free infrastructure of virtual worlds, and even improves on the traditional methods as participants have higher levels of engagement and use virtual world workforce collaboration apps.

Enterprise virtual world killer app #2 is the application presentation layer. Virtual worlds are the obvious next generation front-end to any data application. Exponentially more information can be seen at a glance and perceived immediately through visual image rather than read and processed (example: Bashiba). Problem drill down and resolution is also quicker and more effective. Many companies are moving to virtual control centers as the front end to their data applications. IBM features green data centers for both internal and client use to provide lower-cost improved control over nationwide data centers and remote process administration (SLurl). Facilities manager Eolus integrates SAP in the back-end with virtual world platforms in the front-end, representing multiple dimensions of information in a 4-tier virtual map for optimized management of global operations.

Enterprise virtual world killer app #3 is eCommerce. Virtual worlds are the obvious next generation platform for eCommerce, with detailed visual representations of products available for inspection and avatar-based navigation instead of locating items through menus. This trend will strengthen as more cell phones are smart phones and mobile virtual worlds clients are available.

For more information and images of Enterprise Virtual Worlds applications, please see Slides 16-22 of this presentation.

2. Interoperability
The 60+ existing virtual worlds platforms are isolated silos (lists of virtual world platforms: Virtual Worlds Review and VirtualWorldsNews). It is as if every website used a different flavor of html and required a separate login identity. There are two levels of the interoperability challenge. First, export and import functionality needs to be standard between 3d modeling software programs (3DS Max, Maya, etc.) and into virtual worlds platforms. Second, avatars and inventory need to be portable across worlds. One idea is to have a namespace registry system and avatar servers like DNS servers. Open-source platforms like realXtend and OpenSimulator are starting to emerge but do not have the traffic of the vast established worlds like Second Life, There and Entropia Universe.

3. Micropayment Network
The third vital step in moving virtual worlds forward is the establishment of a micropayment network. The breadth and amount of activity could be substantial. The network would be like PayPal, spanning any and all gaming and virtual world platforms, and could also handle web-based and brick-and-mortar transactions. The regulatory hurdles are sizable particularly given the international dimension but one possibility could be harnessing the emerging cell phone payment networks for virtual world micropayments.

Revolutions in biology futures

Biology is continuing its progression from art to information science to engineering problem. As with many technology areas, advances in tools are driving a new era of science, and tools, science and paradigms are all evolving in biology.

DNA Sequencing
The technology for reading DNA, sequencing, is continuing to outpace Moore’s Law. Next-gen high-throughput sequencing leader Pacific Biosciences estimates their 15-minute $1000 genome solution will be on the market in 2013, more than surpassing the Archon X Prize requirements (100 people, 10 days, $10,000 per person).

DNA Synthesizing
The technology for writing DNA, synthesizing, is also extending its capability exponentially. The traditional methods involve laborious manual molecular biology tricks, oligonucleotide synthesis plus ligation, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and polymerase assembly. These approaches have been supplanted by printing the code directly from a computer or ordering it from any of the 70 worldwide DNA synthesis foundries like Tech Dragon doing a billion dollars of business annually.

Personalized genomics and synthetic biology
The two biggest current revolutions are in personalized genomics and synthetic biology. Therapies are only in the early stages of development but personalized genetic information has the possibility of upstreaming healthcare to tailored medication and preventative interventions. Synthetic biology is using engineering to design and construct biological parts, devices and systems. The field has been developing a foundational library of standard and reliable open-source building block components; to date hundreds have been contributed to the Registry of Standard Biological Parts.

Scientific method yields to combinatorics
In any of the vast areas where biology is now an information science, empiricism and simulation are replacing the traditional scientific method. Instead of hypothesis and trial and error, nearly limitless combinations can be tested and studied for objective understanding of biological phenomena.

A more detailed look at Biology Futures is available here.

Future of entrepreneurialism

The traditional definition of entrepreneurship is expanding to include more creative ways of approaching business, applying business disciplines to social problems and establishing a wider range of success metrics. Four key trends are coming together to facilitate this new era of entrepreneurship: a shift in social consciousness, the democratization of capital, innovative responses to traditional financial systems and the low cost of starting a startup in the globalized world.

Shift in social consciousness
There is a great attitude shift underway towards sustainability and social responsibility. Al Gore, Paul Hawken and others have helped to put global warming, carbon neutrality, poverty and equity firmly on the international agenda. Part of the new social consciousness is also about effectiveness and accountability. Cycling the bottom of the pyramid out of poverty requires getting target populations actively involved. Loans are better than aid.

Democratization of capital
The ability to have more granular attribute knowledge about all economic transactions has triggered the demand to direct capital and consumption based on these affinity attributes. People are willing to pay on average 5-10% more for their attribute choices, for fair-trade, organic and local items, for hybrid cars and for blended value or double/triple bottom line financial returns.

Innovations to the traditional financial system
The shortcomings of traditional financial systems, their hierarchical nature, the lack of universal access and cyclic failures like the current mortgage crisis are triggering innovative solutions such as…

• Microfinance and P2P finance (for example, Kiva is currently active in 40 countries and lending about $750,000 per week)
• Socially Responsible Investing and social capital markets including social venture capital as offered by GoodCap
• Timebanks, gift economies and other non-monetary currency solutions
• Alternative payment mechanisms like developing country cell phone networks as money transfer systems

Low cost of starting a startup in the globalized world
The increasingly low cost of starting a startup makes a whole new tier of businesses possible: the LAMP software bundle provides free technology infrastructure, APIs replace business development and blogs and community interaction replace marketing (social networks become an overlay, a property of every website) and virtual world interactions replace face-to-face meetings.

Editing human utility functions

There is a claim that potentially coming technologies, molecular nanotechnology and artificial general intelligence (AGI) for example, will not render human life much different. To the extent that humans control these technologies, it will be further cases of the same evolved human society using technological tools. But the claim goes on to include the ability to dramatically edit human biology as also not making a big change.

It is easier to agree with the first claim than the second. Regarding biology, even without editing utility functions, it is already being found that genes, hormones and other physical details determine a large part and much more of our existence than a conscious mind deigns to think. Genetic therapies, hormonal management and other tools may serve as de facto utility function editing. Better neuroscience, computer-based mindfiles, artificial intelligence aids for abstracting lifelogs and other advances could presumably allow for direct exposure and editing of human utility functions.

There are some examples of what occurs when humans have the opportunity to self modify through plastic surgery, steroids, tattoos and virtual-world avatars. With plastic surgery and steroids, the only objective appears to attain a closer social ideal of beauty or athletic prowess, but this could be a function of cost and legality. Tattoos show much more creativity and human expressiveness; many people think deeply about this self-modification and its personal meaning.

Virtual worlds, where the cost of identity modification is essentially free, show some interesting patterns. The predominant trend is that at their first experience with virtual avatars, maybe 80% of people seek to represent themselves as the cultural ideal (20 years old, the tallest, fittest possible). The rest, an increasing percentage over time, seek the long tails, experimenting and exploring and becoming highly individualized. Some examples are the avatar with a rotating satellite dish as a head, the miniaturized avatar for easier navigation and many humanoid personifications.

If the dynamics are similar in the case of human utility function editing: low cost, legal and ease of changeability, the expectation would be that a lot of experimentation and day-to-day change would occur. Utility functions and personalities might be available for design, sharing and download on the net, to be experienced directly or for entertainment. Sliders could allow for in-flight fine-tuning. Going out could mean not just selecting what to wear but who to be.

Which brings up an intriguing identity question, who are you when you can alter your genes, hormones, personality and drives at will?

Future of taxes

The advent of a post-scarcity material goods economy could revolutionize more than just material goods.

Taxes based on income, consumption (sales tax) and property would make little sense in a world where people have a minimal need to work and can build and recycle buildings and objects at will, perhaps including land.

Need for taxes does not evaporate
An alternative means of taxation would need to be established. The amount and type of public services demanded would be shifting too in this future environment, but it is likely that some degree of public services would be needed at least in the short term which would require tax revenues.

Basis for taxation is a fairly easily resolved problem, at least in terms of methodology although perhaps not implementation. The easiest tax solution would be to return to the poll tax, a fixed fee for each adult. Of course this might only be a stopgap measure until any possibility of multiple electronic copies and physical embodiments of people/intelligences became real.

World financial system
A big portion of the world financial system is also collateral-based. There are $14.0 trillion in outstanding mortgages in the U.S. (Sep 2007) perhaps lower by a half trillion per the subprime crisis, about the same as the annual $13.9 trillion GDP (2007), but less than the $25 trillion NYSE market capitalization (2006).

The market capitalization of listed companies is based on perceptions of their future prospects. Companies will have been in on the shift and indeed creating the shift to a post-scarcity material goods economy and are likely to have been adjusting along the way. The mortgage industry, 80% of whose value depends on houses and buildings as collateral (20% on land values) would have to change quite a bit.

Future strategies for the mortgage industry
Once the mortgage industry even starts to suspect a possible endgame of real estate structures being worthless since they can be generated at will, it should start bringing loan terms way in, no more long-dated 30 year mortgages but much shorter periods of 5 or 10 years with periodic re-evaluations and other reset stipulations.

The visionaries will short or get out of the mortgage business and mortgage stocks and bonds, but there does not seem to be a way out of 80-100% unrecoverable value slippage. During the period of anticipating the post-scarcity material goods economy, the value of houses and existing mortgages could decrease, requiring revaluations by mortgage companies and realistically some sort of government assistance or bailout. It would not make sense to hold borrowers nationwide responsible for loans whose values have dramatically declined. The housing futures market would grow in use as a tool for all parties, homeowners, borrowers, lenders and speculators, to manage their exposure.

Angel investors drive innovation

The Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire reported that in 2007, angels invested almost as much as venture capitalists in startup companies, $26.0 billion vs. $29.4 billion. Focused on seed and startup stage financings, angels invested in far more firms, 57,120 vs. 3,813 for venture capitalists. Angel investment growth was flat in 2007 vs. 2006 while venture capital investment grew 11%. San Francisco Bay Area angel investors comprised 10% of total angel investment activity. As with venture capital, the top four categories of angel investment in order were software, healthcare, biotech and energy.

Angel investing was once a solitary activity driven by personal networks, the practice has been formalizing in the last several years and there are now over 150 angel investor groups in the U.S. and Canada. The groups typically meet monthly where 3-6 pre-screened companies present to members. Angel investors are not disengaged retirees, 80% continue to be actively involved in the business world. Cleantech and even social venture capital are starting to be interest areas for angel investors.

Angel investors are a critical component of the entrepreneurial ecosystem and should be encouraged and sponsored by communities trying to establish a more innovative environment. For startups, angels can be an important resource for funding, feedback, contacts and exposure. The contribution and impact of angel investors can be expected to grow.

Water, the new oil

The $300 billion worldwide water industry is thought of as a policy area and an energy area, but not as a technology area. Every industry is really now a technology industry. Now is still an early phase of the water industry and there appears to be a lot of low-hanging fruit room for improvement such as reducing the 25-33% leakage that can occur in transport canals and pipe systems. Before looking at technology, the current focal points of improvement are reclamation, hydrologic models and conservation incentives.

Desalination and other Technology
There has not been a lot of recent improvement in desalination technology, and it remains expensive, 25 times the cost of traditionally piped water in some markets. The main reason for it remaining expensive is the high energy cost as a key input, so it is seen as an energy problem not a water solution. Solar, wind and other energy solutions could improve this. Advances in membrane filtration for reverse osmosis and developing other desalination mechanisms such as synthetic bacteria could shift the economics.

Hydrologic Models and Reclamation
Hydrologic models are the main focus of current improvement to better manage surface and ground water and to reclaim rainwater. Surface and ground water can be stored conjunctively and transported between storage mechanisms using such tools as aquifer injection wells and recharge ponds. Rainwater can be reclaimed for direct use (irrigation for example) and for reservoir supply.

Pricing and Metering
Another low-hanging fruit solution would be the widespread metering of water consumption. Some anecdotal studies have shown consumption dropping by a third with the advent of metering and that water is price elastic, usage declines when price increases. Removing or reducing discounted water as a farm subsidy could drive conservation as true costs are experienced by users. Water markets could further encourage conservation-oriented agricultural use and make prices more transparent and accurate as water market participants are attracted. Tools like the Drought Monitor could help authorities shift water supply around a fungible national grid.

Advanced civilizations forgo simulation?

Nick Bostrom's Simulation Argument articulates three future possibilities: “either almost every civilization like ours goes extinct before reaching technological maturity; or almost every mature civilization lacks any interest in building Matrices; or almost all people with our kind of experiences live in Matrices. He suggests that there is a 20% chance based on what we know now that we are living in a matrix.

Considering these three possibilities, the second case looks most probable, that technologically-mature civilizations are not interested in running simulations. It could be quite possible both because of its own likelihood and the likelihood of there being little value to simulations with more primitive self-aware participants (ourselves).

Future irrelevance of simulations with self-aware participants
It is quite possible that technologically-advanced societies may be able to achieve their objectives more effectively by other means rather than by running simulations. These more efficient means could be pure math, higher levels of abstraction, greater intelligence and better tools.

The main reasons that a non-technologically advanced society like ours thinks running simulations would be useful are to gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and our behaviors, to explore alternative histories and for leisure and entertainment either as observers or participants.

It is quite possible in the future that societies and entities will understand themselves so well that simulation will not be necessary. For example, augmented reality overlays could display or predict another party's utility function and provide a 3d data visualization of their likely future behaviors.

Alternative histories (e.g.; Napoleon not defeated at Waterloo, no Yucatan impact asteroid 65 million years ago, Greenland ice sheet not melting in the 2000s) would not need to be run, they would just be known or predictable. They would be obvious to a super-intelligence in the same way that I know my shoe will come untied if I pull on the lace, I do not need to actually try it. This may also be true for clinical trials and all areas of biology and most scientific experiments. Simulations with self-aware participants could be useful to a future society, but only in a forward-looking sense for more complex situations than can be handled by whatever the CurrentTech is, and the self-aware participants would be contemporary to that era not historical (us).

There are other situations where the objective is not obtaining information, the ever-burgeoning entertainment field for example. Entertainment simulations with self-aware participants would certainly be in demand. However, the primitive level of current humans would render us uninteresting in interactions with future society. For time tourism back in history, again, there is no reason to have primitive self-aware agents such as ourselves, artificial intelligences or non-sentient simulations could more adequately realize the experience.

Finally, there is the possibility that new reasons for running simulations could emerge as society advances, and it would be for these as yet unknown reasons that a future society would run simulations, and yes, there is some non-zero possibility of this.

Conclusion
It could be quite likely that future society will have more advanced technology than simulation, and even in the cases when it is interesting for future society to run simulations with self-aware participants, these self-aware participants would likely be contemporary not primitive (us). There may be less than a 20% chance that we are living in a simulation.