[AfrICANN-discuss] Tell me the future

[Eric M.K Osiakwan]

Loud applause, Adiel and Steve.....

Eric here


On 4 Dec 2007, at 21:04, Anne-Rachel Inné wrote:

> Very Interesting -- the editor will forgive me for rearranging the  
> order of his stories :-). Way to go Adiel, Steve!!!
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/dec/03/ 
> mondaymediasection.internet
> Tell me the future
>
> We asked the godfather of the net to tell us where the technology  
> will take us. He emailed his address book
>
> The Guardian
> Monday December 3 2007
> When we asked Vint Cerf, chief evangelist at Google, to guest edit  
> MediaGuardian, we expected him to bring us some luminaries of the  
> web who we don't often get to hear from. His choices transform an  
> often-asked question ("what's the future?"), into an insight into  
> the thinking of innovators and pioneers. It's no coincidence that  
> three of them are founders of some of the biggest web names.
>
> Their specialist fields (from search, to advertising, video  
> streaming to social networking) represent what Cerf believes to be  
> the most exciting areas of development on the web and in the world;  
> notably Steven Huter and Adiel Akplogan, who have pioneered the  
> internet infrastructure in Africa.
>
> Finally, each one has had, and will continue to have, a profound  
> impact on the future of media.
>
> Developing world
> Steven Huter and Adiel Akplogan
> Research associate, University of Oregon Network Startup Resource  
> Center; CEO, Regional Registry for Internet Number Resources for  
> Africa
> The first full internet connection to the African continent was  
> established in Tunisia in October 1991. Over the next 15 years, the  
> transition from store-and-forward email networks to full internet  
> connectivity in capital cities all over Africa progressed steadily,  
> with Eritrea being the last to join the global internet in November  
> 2000.
>
> While most of the continent's internet connections are via  
> satellite today, the transition to fibre over the next five years  
> will take off as one or more of the undersea cables currently  
> competing to service eastern and southern Africa become  
> operational. However, penetration to rural communities will  
> continue to be limited due to the lack of infrastructure, and the  
> cost of a personal computer is typically more than what the average  
> person in a village can afford.
>
> Consumer broadband services via DSL are becoming available in an  
> increasing number of countries; however, service costs depend  
> greatly on the pervasiveness and reliability of local  
> infrastructure. Wireless solutions will continue to evolve as the  
> dominant service for "last kilometre" access due to the lack of  
> local infrastructure. Given that national scale fibre build-outs  
> are not a major focus of the five-year budget plans for most  
> governments, most service providers will continue to deploy a  
> combination of wireless and leased line infrastructure from  
> telecommunications companies for providing internet access. Overall  
> progress will occur, but realistically, the limited or unavailable  
> national infrastructure (power and fibre) will make it difficult to  
> attain economies of scale, which will limit pan-African internet  
> development between now and 2012.
>
> The explosion in mobile telephony that has turned Africa into the  
> fastest-growing market in the world, at more than twice the  
> international average growth in subscriber numbers, will continue  
> to drive locally-fuelled innovations. A number of SMS and voice- 
> enabled applications are already in use in numerous African  
> markets, providing financial, agricultural, health, and other  
> information services. Network services via mobile devices will  
> accelerate as mobile operators upgrade infrastructure, and cheaper  
> and more sophisticated handsets lower the bar for innovation.
>
> The rise of a youthful, entrepreneurial and well-educated vanguard  
> of Africans will lead this overhaul of the continent's  
> communications services. Countries that are embracing information  
> technology today and harnessing the power of wireless networks,  
> mobile telephony and low-cost technology for the end-user, along  
> with establishing regulatory environments to foster  
> entrepreneurship, will evolve rapidly over the next five years.  
> Countries that establish and promote internet exchange points will  
> help to cultivate the localisation of African internet traffic, and  
> stimulate the creation and distribution of more local content.
>
> To take full advantage of the power of the internet, African  
> leaders must give rise to regulatory and political environments  
> that remove cumbersome barriers, encourage competition by opening  
> up markets to engage more access providers, and capitalise on these  
> positive forces that ultimately will be the dynamic impetus to  
> propel Africa forward.
>
> Social networking
> Chris De Wolfe
> CEO, co-founder MySpace
> In only a few years, social networks have become a staple in the  
> internet landscape as the social networking phenomenon allowed  
> people to "put their lives online". A person's profile became a  
> representation of who they really were in the offline world, and  
> allowed them to transfer their offline world online.
>
> More than ever, social networks are blurring online and offline  
> worlds, evolving into social destinations that are driving the  
> direction of the larger web and affecting industries like  
> advertising, music and politics.
>
> Predicting the future of social networks exclusively misses the  
> larger point - these evolving online social destinations are laying  
> the groundwork for the new social web which we believe is becoming  
> infinitely more personal, more portable, and more collaborative.
>
> First, as we expand these social destinations to all corners of the  
> world, we must always think in terms of the individual. With  
> millions of people using social websites, there's an increasing  
> demand to make everyone's web experience personal. In the same way  
> a home or office is your physical address, we expect your personal,  
> online social profile to become your internet address. When I give  
> out www.myspace.com/chrisdewolfe to friends and colleagues,  
> everyone knows where to find me online.
>
> We expect aspects of all socially-based sites to become  
> increasingly portable. In terms of mobile, we expect to have  
> relationships with every carrier and device-maker in the world and  
> we expect that half of our future traffic will come from non-PC users.
>
> Social activity is happening everywhere and we expect applications  
> and features to be more fluid, based on the online population that  
> want content where they want it, when they want it, and how they  
> want it. Social activity should be portable and we expect the  
> industry will continue to move in that direction.
>
> Lastly, online social destinations work best when creativity and  
> development are collaborative concepts. From personal profiles, to  
> the widget economy, to the OpenSocial standard - the future of the  
> social web will harness the savvy of the masses to produce more  
> relevant and meaningful social experiences, ultimately pushing the  
> larger industry to be more innovative and progressive.
>
> Lowering the barrier to entry for a new generation of developers  
> will lead to a more collaborative and dynamic web and directly  
> affect the tools and feature sets available on socially-based  
> sites. Supporting a more collaborative web creates a more global  
> and participatory internet experience for everyone.
>
> The evolution of social networks is kick-starting a broad global  
> shift for how people, content and culture collide on the web. Right  
> now we're looking at the tip of the iceberg for what the social web  
> will look like in the future. Fundamentally, all social  
> destinations must expand while staying personal, they must engage  
> users while empowering portability, and they must work with up and  
> coming innovators and major web leaders to both collaborate and  
> contribute to the larger web community.
>
> Video
> Chad Hurley
> CEO, co-founder YouTube
> In five years, video broadcasting will be the most ubiquitous and  
> accessible form of communication. The tools for video recording  
> will continue to become smaller and more affordable. Personal media  
> devices will be universal and interconnected. People will have the  
> opportunity to record and share video with a small group of friends  
> or everyone around the world.
>
> Today, eight hours of new video are uploaded to YouTube every  
> minute. This will grow exponentially over the next five years. Our  
> goal is to allow every person on the planet to participate by  
> making the upload process as simple as placing a phone call. This  
> new video content will be available on any screen - in your living  
> room or in your pocket - and will bring together all the diverse  
> media which matters to you, from videos of family and friends to  
> news, music, sports, cooking and more.
>
> In the next five years, users will be at the centre of their video  
> experience, you will have more access to more information, and the  
> world will be a smaller place.
>
> Advertising
> Maurice Lévy
> Chairman and CEO, Publicis Groupe
> Five years is an eternity in technology, but from our vantage point  
> a few things are clear about what the internet and internet  
> advertising will look like in 2012. One, virtually all media will  
> be digital, and digital will enable almost all kinds of  
> advertising. Two, online advertising will depend more than ever on  
> the one element which has always been at the heart of impactful  
> advertising, both analogue and digital: creativity. The explosion  
> of media channels means this is a glorious time to think and act  
> creatively. In art history terms, we are at the dawn of the  
> Renaissance after the Dark Ages.
>
> Just as the Renaissance broke down the distinctions between sacred  
> and profane art forms and between individual and community, so we  
> are seeing a similar exciting blurring today - and this will only  
> intensify. Linear media is fast giving way to liquid media, where  
> you can move seamlessly in and out of different settings.  
> Prescribed time - the 7 o'clock news, the Friday night out at the  
> cinema, etc - is now becoming multitasking time. People are no  
> longer willing to put up with interruptions for a commercial break  
> during their entertainment experience, and so we have to find  
> incredibly creative solutions to interact with them and engage them  
> in genuine and honest ways. This implies a brave new world of  
> engagement and involvement between marketers and consumers and will  
> also mean co-production between marketers and media owners. Scale  
> will be critical: in five years' time, around 2 billion people will  
> be constant internet users and mobile internet computing will be  
> ubiquitous. What a great time to be in the business!
>
> Mobile
> Biz Stone
> Co-founder, Twitter
> As we increasingly realise the web as a vital social utility and  
> important marketplace we cannot ignore an even bigger potential.  
> The power of the internet is not limited to the PC. Twitter has  
> emerged to create a seamless layer of social connectivity across  
> SMS, IM, and the web. Operating on the simple concept of status,  
> Twitter asks one question: "What are you doing?" Friends, family  
> and colleagues stay connected through short responses.
>
> The potential for this simple form of hybrid communication  
> technology is strong. For example, a person in India may text  
> "Follow Biz" and get online via Twitter over SMS in a matter of  
> seconds. Biz might be updating from the US on a PC. Nevertheless,  
> the updates are exchanged instantly.
>
> Our future holds in store the promise of increased connectivity to  
> a powerful social internet which truly extends to every little spot  
> on our Planet Earth. We're all affected by and defined by each  
> other's actions. What are you doing?
>
> Search
> Peter Norvig
> Director of research, Google
> Yale librarian Rutherford Rogers said "We're drowning in  
> information and starving for knowledge." The internet is an ocean  
> of information and in the near future we'll speed through it  
> effortlessly and intuitively, like a tuna. No, I don't mean you'll  
> have fins.
>
> If you haven't been searching for [tuna tail vortices] recently,  
> you may not know that a tuna's body creates small vortices in the  
> water that are then channelled by the tuna's tail to create  
> additional power.
>
> This symbiosis of tuna and watery environment forms a more  
> efficient propulsion system than anything designed by human engineers.
>
> In the future, a similar symbiosis of searcher and computational  
> environment will allow us to move faster through the internet than  
> we would have thought possible. We will not just be typing in  
> keywords and getting back a list of 10 web pages.
>
> Instead, our interaction will be more fluid, our computers will  
> accept our requests in many forms, and will scan our environment  
> proactively, looking for ways to provide us with additional power.  
> We will get back web pages, yes, along with existing books and  
> videos, but also custom tables, charts, animations, databases, and  
> summarisations created on-the-fly in response to our specific needs.
>
> Today, nobody says "I need to connect to a megawatt power station"  
> - instead we assume that electricity will be available on demand in  
> almost every room of every building we visit. Edison could see that  
> this would be useful, but could not foresee the range of  
> appliances, from food processors to mp3 players, that this  
> availability would enable. So too will information flow freely to  
> us in the future, and be transformed by as-yet-unforeseen  
> information appliances.
>
> Archive
> Bruce Cole
> Chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities (US)
> At the National Endowment for the Humanities, we believe the  
> internet and other information-age tools, such as digital  
> archiving, will help us understand the world more deeply, broadly,  
> and creatively. For humanists just as much for scientists, the  
> ability to mine, analyse, and understand data, simulate complex  
> environments, and combine information from a wide variety of  
> sources, is critical to 21st-century discovery and innovation.
>
> The exciting new tools of the digital age also present unique  
> challenges. With digital technologies, we can comb through  
> information in seconds versus years, and assimilate knowledge from  
> a much broader array of sources for new insights. But the wellbeing  
> of the infrastructure itself demands new time-frames. Information  
> in books can be preserved for centuries before transfer to new  
> "media" is needed. Information on disks, thumb drives, and other  
> digital media has a lifespan measured in years or even months  
> rather than centuries before transfer to the next generation of  
> media is required.
>
> Just as physical infrastructure is a foundation for modern life,  
> digital infrastructure (data storage, computers, networks, etc.) is  
> foundational infrastructure for the information age. Attention to  
> the health and support of this infrastructure is critical to  
> ensuring that born-digital knowledge is preserved and passed on for  
> the benefit of future generations.
>
>
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Eric M.K Osiakwan
ICT Integrator
Internet Research
www.internetresearch.com.gh
emko at internetresearch.com.gh
42 Ring Road Central, Accra-North
Tel: +233.21.258800 ext 2031
Fax: +233.21.258811
Cell: +233.24.4386792



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