Mini 9 from Dell
Well, I finally made it to sxsw. In addition
to phenomenal discussions and socializing (me thinks the real purpose of sxsw), I came to Austin to garner knowledge on the Future of the Internet.
Why? Because social media is maturing, and staying on the edge is critical. To help, I moved to new mobile platforms for sxsw, the Dell Mini 9 Netbook (see WIRED article on the widespread proliferation of netbooks) and the reborn Palm Centro (awesome phone).
These two devices, iPhones, and other portable devices capture the mobile heartbeat of the Internet, and the way most folks access content online. Emersion helps me understand what’s next, how people can use these media forms to communicate. In fact, I blogged this post using the Mini 9!
Jonathan Zittrain from Harvard Law School led a session on the Future of the Internet. He gave a great round up of the Internet (which took me back to the days of Prodigy). Then launched the discussion of civil technologies, and how the Internet needs to evolve.
Zittrain cited the number of new resources to engage the internet; mobile, small, dumber, Internet access devices. Examples cited included Kindle, iPhones, Blackberries, etc. These devices sre dumber and takes control away from the user. Internet access and applications are controlled, and vetted before users can access them. Example: iPhone application approval processes.
Zittrain felt the future is this new model of controlling applications on dumber devices. This environment features the cloud (apps hosted on the Internet as opposed to the PC), and the locus of coding new applications in controlled environments (Facebook is another custodian environment), and smaller, portable dumber devices.
This session was the perfect segway to the Emerging Mobile Technologies and Trends panel. Fortunately the history session was only a couple of minutes. Rob Gonda – Sapient, and Juan-Carlos Morales – Sapient Interactive, and uh, a Mr. Stuart were the panelists.
Stuart said in Japan, the iPhone model (mobile as a primary Internet access device) was in place years ago. Japanese see the iPhone as un-innovative because they’ve had this kind of access for a long period of time. In Africa mobile Internet access is the only way to access.
Trends to watch in mobile:
All in all, mobile Internet life is happening now on small devices everywhere thanks to broadband capable, small computing devices and phones. Applications are being developed en masse. The future is here.
Geoff:
Nice write-up – I appreciate hearing about something other than where people are meeting up!
Tom O’Brien
Great post, and lovely to see the photo of Dell Mini – I am a huge fan of netbooks! I owned a first generation ASUS eeepc when it was launched as the world’s first netbook, and recently got a HP Mini.