"... since I believe markets and the flow of capital to fund important innovation is the best way to solve the world's problems."
Except for failing schools, health care, energy, and climate "change".
Sorry Fred, but I couldn't resist. Great post and interesting predictions.
ErikSchwartz
· 1 year ago
It's funny how fast you can become "old media" these days. CNET and Y! are now old media.
The water issue is fascinating.
The mobile phone will become a terminal, not a stand alone computer. The power is in the network (this ties into Josh's data comments too).
Dave Ambrose
· 1 year ago
Couldn't agree more with their views on mobile. I was even more impressed to see water economics come up as discussion point.
Great to see this highlighted in this morning's "old" news. :)
rossgreenspan
· 1 year ago
Water issues we face will be a consequence of climate change. Water tech will replace global warming as a priority because it is a tangible problem with technical solutions. Improved water technologies to solve droughts brought on by shifting climate patterns as a result of warming...
Maybe more appropriate is to say water tech will replace alternative energy tech as a global priority?
Graham S.
· 1 year ago
A fundamental issue with all of this thinking about technology is it hides the true savior -- conservation. I'm surprised there wasn't more talk about doing more with less: less water, less power, less food, less fuel.
Think about the water that goes into manufacturing and running all of those data centers powering the mobile network!
scott
· 1 year ago
The first steps to conversation is efficiency, automation and scale. I think each of the points touches upon, or the need thereof, those three things. Especially when it comes to the comment about "microbial engineering products will involve some form of evolution".
bernard lunn
· 1 year ago
Water is a real near term crisis. See this movie: http://flowthefilm.com/about.php The way they put in the movie: Environment crisis - maybe 30 years away Food crisis - maybe 3 years away Water crisis - right now Khosla is right, environment is the underlying cause/issue. Water is proximate and probably more fixable with the right will. But thats all a long way from Web 2.0 stuff Personally I am betting on # 1: Demographics is Destiny
cortland
· 1 year ago
"From Joe Schoendorf: Water tech will replace global warming as a global priority."
Very interesting comments.
Reliable access to safe, clean drinking water is a growing issue around the world. Unfortunately, the problem is exacerbated by global climate change which is and will continue to have negative effects on freshwater resources and water infrastructure - already a significant challenge in many parts of the world. Global warming and its impact of changing weather patterns are part of what's fueling the "water divide" between those who have reliable access to safe drinking water and those who don't. This growing gap could lead to large populations being more vulnerable to water shortages, flood, drought or other environmental disaster brought on or made worse by the impacts of global climate change. It's happening in Burma right now.
Water tech will make a huge difference in a lot of lives if the solutions are affordable, portable and relatively easy to implement. Those solutions do not excuse us from addressing the underlying problem of global climate change. "Markets and the flow of capital" can aid in solving the fundamental environmental issue(s) of our day, but only when we, as a society, decide that solving these massive, overarching environmental issues is a priority for business AND government. One cannot solve these problems without the other.
Igniter
· 1 year ago
On solving the problems of the world, I think social media/web2.0/3.0 investing is really going to demonstrate some approaches to investing and supporting social innovation. The social innovation field looks a lot a systems science and emergence and deals like twitter.com are showing how to make investments in things that are changing systems (inherently more complex). It's also connected closely to Umair Haque's work on DNA and edge competencies and I think we're on the verge of breaking through the artificially separate domains of social and tech, investing and philanthropy, etc.
Great post... interesting times.
fredwilson
· 1 year ago
Check out the posts we did on the usvblog about our sessions event we called 'hacking philanthropy'
It was all about the stuff you mentioned in your comment
Igniter
· 1 year ago
Fred, thanks for the reminder - hadn't gotten to reading the full transcript until now. A very interesting conversation particularly the part about the underlying mindset and the structural changes increasingly possible.
One of the things that I've found particularly interesting in this is actually seeing these multiple fronts as part of the greater evolution of our civilization. It's not about open source, social networks, energy markets, financial systems, biology, philosophy individually. It's about the evolution of our civilization which those things are all expressions of. To me, we're entering a phase where things are increasingly reconfiguring themselves and things can be more easily reconfigured. Some of the interesting things under that is what is the helpful/productive mindset that will more likely lead our civilization into a just and sustainable state, and what are the most effective ways to accelerate practical, leveraging initiatives that move us in that direction. Finally, I think the information data question gets most interesting when we step past metrics and look the information design of the systems that are changing or we want to change - or simply think about information in terms of being the essence of systems - recognizing it can also easily become a black-hole of navel gazing
Thanks again for the pointer. Great conversation.
fredwilson
· 1 year ago
i posted a part of this comment that i really liked on fredwilson.vc
hypermark
· 1 year ago
Kopelman's comments on the rise of the "implicit" internet are dead on, and juxtapose nicely with Khosla's comments on privacy being a red herring.
Why? Because via what I think of as a "social map-lication," all of this implicit data can be formally connected together into a social map, which in the hands of the creator, makes the implicit data EXPLICIT and thus, manageable.
Arguably, the best tonic to loss of privacy is managed transparency since we have all seen the perils of blindly relying on trusted third parties to prudently manage our personal data. Give tools to consumers, and they can better manage their online data.
I have blogged about this in a post called, 'Envisioning the Social Map-lication."
I guess that's good news for Microsoft's HealthVault and Google Health who prefer exemption from HIPAA regulation for their online personal healthcare record services.
gregory
· 1 year ago
one trend not mentioned, migration of labor .... another, social unrest between haves and have nots .... another completely restructuring of the global finance system and the quantification of profit, to include social costs .... and what are all those handheld devices going to be commnunicating? the elements of what i call the experience economy ....
Eben Thurston
· 1 year ago
Great stuff. Thanks for the heads up.
Steven Kane
· 1 year ago
i would have thought you would have included Josh Kopelman's thoughts on "Venture Capital 2.0" - as capital is the fuel for the innovation engine that powers us into the future, the continuing material diminishing of returns for the venture capital asset class could undercut the development of all the other exciting stuff?
fredwilson
· 1 year ago
Well we talk about that so often here at avc that I didn't think it was particularly insightful for this group
Fred
joshs
· 1 year ago
Evolution vs. design: if you believe leaders in the Accelerating Change movement, we're going to be able to copy a human brain a lot faster than we'll discover or recreate it's design. While that inflection point is probably still a decade or so away, it shouldn't be surprising that there will be an increasing number of useful technologies that rely on generated algorithms that we don't truly understand.
ginsu
· 1 year ago
re: "evolution trumps design" - I wasn't at the panel either, but I think that one concept there that's consistent with the general tenor of your blog Fred is that development of leading web applications today depends on rapid iteration and incorporation of user feedback. In the past online businesses might have placed a huge emphasis on getting the offering designed as perfectly as possible before any user sees it. Now businesses of any size will launch a product that is somewhere between half-baked and beautiful, and depend on the "evolutionary" mechanism of usage data/feedback and short development cycles to improve the product while it is being used by millions. . . . Say, when is Gmail coming out of Beta, anyway?
captainflummox
· 1 year ago
Maybe calling privacy a red herring is a red herring.
pierreloic
· 1 year ago
Thanks for this post and the link to tech trader. Very interesting.
Just reacting to Josh K's idea of the implicit web and the fact that the information already exists in silos right now. I totally buy into this idea and I don't think we can even start grasping the impact on business that the aggregation of this information will have as I'm sure that it will burst pockets of value and create new ones.
The first steps in this direction very much relates to your post on Google Friends Connect. Such initiatives will help breakdown these silos by decoupling the applications from the data.
All Comments
Except for failing schools, health care, energy, and climate "change".
Sorry Fred, but I couldn't resist. Great post and interesting predictions.
The water issue is fascinating.
The mobile phone will become a terminal, not a stand alone computer. The power is in the network (this ties into Josh's data comments too).
Great to see this highlighted in this morning's "old" news. :)
Maybe more appropriate is to say water tech will replace alternative energy tech as a global priority?
Think about the water that goes into manufacturing and running all of those data centers powering the mobile network!
http://flowthefilm.com/about.php
The way they put in the movie:
Environment crisis - maybe 30 years away
Food crisis - maybe 3 years away
Water crisis - right now
Khosla is right, environment is the underlying cause/issue. Water is proximate and probably more fixable with the right will.
But thats all a long way from Web 2.0 stuff
Personally I am betting on # 1: Demographics is Destiny
Very interesting comments.
Reliable access to safe, clean drinking water is a growing issue around the world. Unfortunately, the problem is exacerbated by global climate change which is and will continue to have negative effects on freshwater resources and water infrastructure - already a significant challenge in many parts of the world. Global warming and its impact of changing weather patterns are part of what's fueling the "water divide" between those who have reliable access to safe drinking water and those who don't. This growing gap could lead to large populations being more vulnerable to water shortages, flood, drought or other environmental disaster brought on or made worse by the impacts of global climate change. It's happening in Burma right now.
Water tech will make a huge difference in a lot of lives if the solutions are affordable, portable and relatively easy to implement. Those solutions do not excuse us from addressing the underlying problem of global climate change. "Markets and the flow of capital" can aid in solving the fundamental environmental issue(s) of our day, but only when we, as a society, decide that solving these massive, overarching environmental issues is a priority for business AND government. One cannot solve these problems without the other.
Great post... interesting times.
It was all about the stuff you mentioned in your comment
transcript until now. A very interesting conversation particularly
the part about the underlying mindset and the structural changes
increasingly possible.
One of the things that I've found particularly interesting in this is
actually seeing these multiple fronts as part of the greater
evolution of our civilization. It's not about open source, social
networks, energy markets, financial systems, biology, philosophy
individually. It's about the evolution of our civilization which
those things are all expressions of. To me, we're entering a phase
where things are increasingly reconfiguring themselves and things can
be more easily reconfigured. Some of the interesting things under
that is what is the helpful/productive mindset that will more likely
lead our civilization into a just and sustainable state, and what are
the most effective ways to accelerate practical, leveraging
initiatives that move us in that direction. Finally, I think the
information data question gets most interesting when we step past
metrics and look the information design of the systems that are
changing or we want to change - or simply think about information in
terms of being the essence of systems - recognizing it can also
easily become a black-hole of navel gazing
Thanks again for the pointer. Great conversation.
Why? Because via what I think of as a "social map-lication," all of this implicit data can be formally connected together into a social map, which in the hands of the creator, makes the implicit data EXPLICIT and thus, manageable.
Arguably, the best tonic to loss of privacy is managed transparency since we have all seen the perils of blindly relying on trusted third parties to prudently manage our personal data. Give tools to consumers, and they can better manage their online data.
I have blogged about this in a post called, 'Envisioning the Social Map-lication."
URL: http://thenetworkgarden.com/weblog/2008/04/envi...
Check it out if interested.
Mark
I guess that's good news for Microsoft's HealthVault and Google Health who prefer exemption from HIPAA regulation for their online personal healthcare record services.
Fred
Just reacting to Josh K's idea of the implicit web and the fact that the information already exists in silos right now. I totally buy into this idea and I don't think we can even start grasping the impact on business that the aggregation of this information will have as I'm sure that it will burst pockets of value and create new ones.
The first steps in this direction very much relates to your post on Google Friends Connect. Such initiatives will help breakdown these silos by decoupling the applications from the data.