I’m spending most of the week at eTech, one of O’Reilly Media’s premier gatherings of technologists, that happens every year in San Diego. I have fond memories of attending this conference three years ago, when it included a special day on “Digital Democracy” focused on the emerging impact of the internet on the last presidential election. I’m not sure what I’m going to learn here, but I find it refreshing to get out of the political environment every now and then and talk with people who are used to making things that work, who take for granted that the systems they are working on will get overthrown every few years, and who know that the best ideas are probably being developed out on the edges, by some kids in a garage…
Last night, Tim O’Reilly gave his annual “O’Reilly Radar” talk, where he offers a glimpse of what’s on his event horizon. I won’t regurgitate everything he said, but just comment on a few themes that struck me:
1. O’Reilly says if you want to glimpse where tomorrow’s new products or industries may be forming, look where communities of people are having fun. He cited as an example snowboarding, and pointed as well to new sport of kiteboarding. It’s a bit of a stretch to connect this insight to the political world, but in general I think it makes sense to pay attention to things that people enjoy doing, rather than the things we believe they ought to be doing because it would be good for society.
2. Open source hardware is on its way. O’Reilly pointed to the Chumby, a wireless clock radio which you can hack “with a seam ripper” because you can place it in all kinds of physical objects and program it to work in those settings. What’s cool about these kinds of inventions is that they are really primed to be hacked and used in ways that you might never have anticipated.
3. Speaking of the unanticipated, interesting things are starting to happen around the so-called “attention economy.” Some sites to look at: Twittervision, which shows a continuous display of people’s “twits” on a map of the world; Jaiku, a kind of reverse Twitter that tells you someone’s status if you call them on the phone and they’re busy; and Atten.TV, a service from that turns someone’s web surfing into a channel you can watch. I can definitely see Twitter being a useful tool in helping a campaign’s volunteers swarm around a topic or task, or just cheer themselves on during some important push. And imagine being able to tune into Josh Marshall or Markos Moulitsas’s web surfing…
Technorati Tags: Chumby, eTech2007, Jaiku, Atten.TV, Tim O’Reilly, Twitter, Twittervision