Future trends

I'm at the Pacific Community Network Association Annual Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. I gave the opening keynote this morning. I am really impressed with the energy and enthusiasm for broadband here. Folks up here understand better than many U.S. communities that broadband--affordable broadband--is essential to their communites. The province of British Columbia has hundreds of local community technology projects--active, vibrant efforts that are providing access, training, and services to hundreds of thousands of people in rural communities.

The phone is dead. After a couple of months with my Treo 650, which integrates a Palm PDA and a phone, I'm convinced. And equipment manufacturers are releasing more and more smartphones that integrate similar functions, meaining I'm not the only one who thinks this way.

Nanotechnology has the potential to change the way all sorts of things work. This article about building computer memory using nano-size buckytubes is a perfect example. Memory is one of the most expensive parts of any digital device, and for little computers like iPods and other MP3 music players, the solid state memory or hard drive usually accounts for about half the cost of the components.

If your job involves working with youth, or if it should (economic developers take note), you may want to read this article about the kind of people that visit Apple's iTunes Music Store. You might call people that fit the profile the "iPod Generation."

As many rural areas of the country continue to overbuild low end business incubators and pin their employment hopes on just one more call center, opportunities to step away from the me-too crowd and do something bold and different continue to slip by.

I had a hard time figuring out where to put this item...I finally stuck it under "Future Trends." A UK study shows IT problems are the leading cause of stress in England, with a third of respondents reporting that their number one stressor was the computer. Some of those surveys admitted too much stress drove them to drink and smoke more.

SpaceX is a start up space freight company going after the heavy lift market, as opposed to the passenger/tourism market being pursued by Virgin Galatic. SpaceX has a blog that is updated regularly and provides a wealth of information about ongoing company launches, technical details, and logistics.

Even more interesting is the opennness of the company in discussing problems. The company has had several problems that have delayed the December launch of a rocket, and the blog provides a lot of detail about what the problems are and why.

The FCC has approved the SBC-AT&T merger and the Verizon-MCI merger. What these deals really mean is that long distance as a service is dead, dead, dead, as I like to say.

The baseline for telephony service is now nationwide flat rate calling, or some variant of that that includes a lot of long distance minutes in the base rate and something around or below five cents a minute if you go over.

Use of the Internet is booming in the United States. A new study released by the U.S. Census Bureau shows big changes from 1997.

I was at a talk the other day, and the listener was going at some length about iPods and how the devices were changing the way people did things (as I often write about in this column). But this was a group of about 40 community leaders and economic developers, and one of them, in exasperation, finally blurted out, "Some of us don't have iPods."

The speaker stopped and asked for a show of hands, and it turned out only two people in the room owned an iPod, and one of them was the speaker.

Here's the problem.

The Washington Post has an interesting article that I think is a must read for rural communities. It is about a rapidly growing trend away from the typical "sprawl" subdivision and towards denser neighborhoods that include low rise and mid rise condos carefully mixed with downtown amenities like stores, libraries, restaurants, and other pedestrian (i.e. cars not needed to get around) destinations.

There is something both wierdly ironic and deeply depressing when American companies happily work with repressive regimes like China and now Myanmar, selling them Internet hardware and software for the express purpose of suppressing free speech (hat tip to Instapundit)

I am attending the 9th Annual Rural Telecommunications Congress Annual Conference, which is one of the oldest community technology meetings in the country. The group is meeting in Lexington, Kentucky this year, and has a record attendance of more than 400 people.

I still get massive skepticism when I tell people traditional TV is dead. But every day, there is more and more activity in the IP TV world. Everything that is wrong with traditional TV (lack of variety, repetition, lack of viewpoints, mediocrity) will be offset (but not eliminated) in the emerging IP TV universe, where anyone can be in the television business, and many already are.

Here are some interesting projects and links:

Michigan gets a hat tip for its Cool Cities program. They apparently not only read Richard Florida's Rise of the Creative Class, but also decided not to just keep doing the same old thing and expecting different results (a typical economic development response).

The Cool City principles are worth reading. Written like a vision statement, they identify key ideas and concepts that the effort intends to pursue.

While the 20th century telecom dinosaurs are fighting it out in places like Texas for 20th century legal rights to 20th century content distribution, the 'net is quietly solving the problem.

An Open Source effort (FOSS is becoming the accepted acronym--Free and Open Source Software) is building the 21st century video distribution system, called DTV. Participatory Culture is putting together a seamless, easy to use, end to end video distribution and viewing system that is completely free, requires no franchise fees, and can deliver any quality of video, up to and including HD TV. The software is currently in beta release, but the interface for the Mac version is excellent and easy to use. It supports downloading for later viewing, so you don't have to watch at any particular time. In other words, it is a personal Tivo-style system, but with a much wider range of material from many more sources.

Like the emerging Energy and Space economies, the Nano Economy is also picking up steam. It's been about twenty years since scientists first began producing nanostructures, but practical applications are beginning to emerge.

Medical researchers have found ways to cause carbon nanotubes to attach to cancer tumors. Using infrared lasers, they can then heat the nanotubes up without harming healthy tissue. The heat absorbed by the nanotubes kills the cancer cells. It appears to be very effective.

Space technology, energy systems,

In a widely reported AP report, NASA set new IP TV records with the launch of the space shuttle. Almost a half a million people watched via a Webcast, which is much higher than the record AOL broke just a few weeks ago with the Live Aid concert.

It demonstrates two things. First, there is a strong and continuing interest in space, and it's encouraging that there is more interest in space than in aging rock stars. We'll avoid the very serious U.S. problem of not graduating enough scientists and engineers for the time being.

Second, it shows the continuing rapid advance of IP TV. Half a million viewers is more than many cable shows have at any given time, so the Internet is well positioned to displace the old Manufacturing Economy television distribution system.

For years now, if I need to get some serious work done on a project, I've had to leave the office--email, the Web, and the phone are too distracting; I can't stay focused long enough to actually think about a problem.

This CNet report details a study that shows the average office worker receives an interrupting distraction every three minutes. But here is the really bad news...it takes eight minutes for our brain to adjust and get focused in on a particular work task or idea.

The LA Times reports that there are now more cellphones than landlines. We went from basically zero cellphones about ten years ago. We are at a point now where most households have at least one cellphone.

We still have a few problems with cellphones, though.