philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

After Broadband: Imagining a Future When Connected Networks Are All-pervasive

...The occasion for the brainstorming was a day-long conference, "After Broadband: Imagining Hyperconnected Futures," held last month at Wharton's new San Francisco campus. It was jointly organized by the school's Mack Center on Technological Innovation and the Institute for the Future, located in Palo Alto.

... By mid-afternoon, it was time for the entire conference to reassemble to hear reports from each of the workshops. Judging from the presentations, it seemed clear that the discussions had all been as free-wheeling as those in the Social group.

For example, the scenario of the workgroup on "Management, Operations, and Analytics" was that "Big Data" could be used to dramatically improve corporate governance at large companies. The group explained: rank and file employees are now routinely connected to social networks and their interactions with those networks often reveal the sorts of things on their minds. A new breed of analytic tools can sift through those postings to get an aggregated sense of the mood inside a company. It might even obtain early warning signals when something is going wrong. The group was careful to stress that the idea shouldn't be taken too far. "We're not going to outsource the FBI to Facebook," said one member. ...

Fierce Competition

Some of the most provocative comments were provided by Bran Ferren, a Hollywood special effects veteran now with Applied Minds, which provides consulting services to businesses. Ferren predicted, for example, that in 250 years, traditional reading and writing will have ceased to be part of daily life, but will instead be a historic curiosity, much like Latin is today. Turning from the distant future to the present, he noted that on account of the Internet, many companies are facing their fiercest competition from firms that are not even in the same business, with newspapers and Google being but one of many examples. ...

Read the full story here: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=3002