Bruce MacVarish Notes

Mobile "Sensing" for Context-Aware Application

From Nokia's Conversation blog, we learn about their vision of turning mobile devices into sensors.  

For me, it serves as an example of Nokia's interest in the "Sensing Wave".

"Every phone is a sensor 
When you start thinking of the mobile device as providing context, you start to think of users projecting who they are, what they are doing, and where they are. But, when you begin to think of what could mobile devices do anonymously, you can see cases where sensor-filled devices can, in aggregate, provide information on traffic, weather, or health patterns."

Most people see how the mobile phone could power context-aware applications by aggregating, analyzing and acting on information "sensed" by the device.  

Here, Nokia highlights how anonymous data could provide context-aware applications for the collective.   In addition, capturing personal data for the individual user will provide context-aware applications and reasoning engines that are critical to helping each of us intelligently filter media and conversations to those that are the most relevant to our situation and preferences.

We're at the early stages of the "Sensing Wave".  Watch for more context-aware applications to emerge that "sense" based on data aggregation, analysis and acting.

Cloud : The Apps

The Web 2.0 Summit 08 panel discussion on "Cloud: The Apps" with Paul Moritz (VMware), Marc Benioff (Salesforce), Dave Girouard (Google Enterprise), Kevin Lynch (Adobe) is well worth a watch.

Some key opening comments:

Paul Maritz: "Need to think about the ability to safely "bank" information with easy of use and security"

Kevin Lynch: "We're in the 4th generation of computing (Mainframe, PC, Web, Rich Reach of Cloud)"

Dave Girouard: "Googl's a native citizen of the Cloud. Disconnect within the un-enlightened Enterprise"

Marc Benioff: "Focused on getting the enterprise into the Cloud"

The Five Stages of Collapse

I've followed John Robb's work for the past year and find his perspective on the impact of a networked and decentralized world interesting.   He recently posted a summary of Dimitry Orlov's "Five Stages of Collapse".

"Dimitry Orlov (author of the excellent book, Reinventing Collapse) has an excellent presentation he calls the Five Stages of Collapse -- a pattern of collapse seen in Russia and Eastern Europe during the 90's (on Google Docs, click to view in new window). These stages are:

• Financial Collapse. Already in motion.
  
• Commercial Collapse. Just started.
  
• Political Collapse (a loss of faith in ideology). First part is over (the recent election in the US). Second part is going to be nasty.
  
• Social Collapse. Potentially the end state or stable equilibrium point for most of the world. Everyone against everyone with points awarded by the global marketplace.
  
• Cultural Collapse. Full meltdown. Global market breaks. 
  

The collapse in the USSR/Eastern Europe ended due to connectivity to a large external environment, collectively the West, which provided stability and a route back from chaos. We don't have an external environment to gain support from with our collapse. It's global."