Towards a Remote Control for Life

Charlie Rose chatted with Ken Auletta about Google and emerging technology this week. Runtime is 38 minutes and recommended viewing. The conversation centers around Ken’s recent New Yorker piece titled The Search Party. During the interview Ken mentioned in passing Charlie’s interview with Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page back on July 26th 2001. Over Google’s first three years of operation it grew 20% month-on-month purely by word-of-mouth.

Six and a half years after bringing Eric Schmidt onboard as CEO Google are well on their way to becoming the first $100bn media company. Wireless is the business driver which will take them there. Key to enabling this is the arrival of handset devices which will deliver a remote control for life. Having been fortunate enough to use the N95 and iPhone over the last 6 months we are not there yet but we are getting there. Interesting times indeed.

Trends for 2008

Two recent Forrester reports have triggered a number of conversations. The first was Five Trends That Will Shape The Business Process And Applications Profession in 2008 by Sharyn Leaver. It highlights Dynamic Business Applications; Web 2.0 and tech populism; software-as-a-service (SaaS); business process centers of excellence (COEs); and the evolving business analyst role as key trends for 2008. Thomas Wailgum provides a good summary here.

The second was Getting Real Work Done in Virtual Worlds by Erica Driver and Paul Jackson. It predicts that within five years, the 3-D Internet will be as important for work as the Web is today. Information and knowledge management professionals should begin to investigate and experiment with virtual worlds. Both reports provide useful reference points as to what lies ahead.