6 Billion Connected (a post Digital Divide narrative) Stuart Gannes Digital Vision Program Stanford University FDIS Conference July 1, 2008
6 Billion Connected (a post Digital Divide
narrative)
Stuart Gannes
Digital Vision Program
Stanford University
FDIS Conference
July 1, 2008
“The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.”
-William Gibson, 1998
Hint: Look to the developing world for innovation.
Two scenarios
Top down
“Telephone wires and radio unite to make neighbors of nations.”
- AT&T Lobby NY, 1932
Bottom’s up, sort of
– Half the world’s population has a cell phone – 80% of world population within reach of cellular signal– Estimate: 5 Billion connected by 2015
Personal mobility: The killer app
Global connectivity
• Mobile subscription growth: 39% annually in Africa, and 28% in Asia between 2005-2007.
• India and China alone added 154 million and 143 million new subscribers during this period.
Mobile devices: Talk is cheap…
• 294.3m handsets/quarter– 3.3 million/day!– Mostly low cost ~$40 today– More than dozen vendors
• Prepaid phones dominate world-wide
– No billing relationship to provider
– Buy SIM card out of vending machine
Not talking is cheaper!
• From calling to “non-calling”– “If you are going to meet
with someone they might say: “I’ll do a missed call when I get there.”
• SMS: At first just a way to save money when communicating– Now: “The biggest
revolution in the language, ever.”
Spain: More phones (50m) than people (44m)
(((o_o))) Not writing is easier
Mcommerce is faster
Money travels wider
Historical caveat - or precedent
http://youtube.com/watch?v=AhsSgcsTMd4
New mobile apps
• From communicating (one to one by voice, and text) to
– Broadcast SMS, Twitter
• From entertainment (consuming media, games) to
– User generated content, social networks
• From information (news, sports weather alerts) to
– Maps, recommendations: Wisdom of crowds
• Commerce: From purchasing (goods, services) to
– Minutes as currency
Mobile devices ‘wannabe’ computers
From communication platforms to communications-enhanced application platforms
But not personal computers!
• Platforms + mobile twist:– New silicon, OS– New add-ons– New form factor– New I/O– Apps different– Interaction with cloud
different– Different display and
keyboard – Battery constraints matter
Early metadata apps
• Berkeley ‘Traffic Modeling’– Tracked 100 drivers with GPS-equipped
phones. Traffic speeds computed based on locations,
– System predicts the onset of traffic interruptions far more effectively than current traffic systems (which cost millions) by using an infrastructure based on people, their mobiles and movements.
• MIT “Reality Mining”– The collection of machine-sensed
environmental data pertaining to human social behavior: work location, time and network usage, etc. correlates with productivity.
– “With just a cell phone, you can go into organizations and find out how happy and how
productive people are, which is really pretty amazing.” --Sandy Pentland MIT
Mobile computing platform will
…thrive on data, and
• Mobile devices record reality and upload info to networks
– Reality recognizable by a human
• Audio, photo, video
– Reality recognizable by a computer
• GPS
• Accelerometers, motion sensors
• Compass
• Temperature, barometric pressure (altitude), CO2
attract developers, and
• Mainframes - IBM• PCs - Microsoft/Intel• Mobile computing contenders
– Microsoft/Windows Mobile– Google/Android– Nokia/Symbian– RIM– Apple
Winner creates/”owns” virtuous cycle
address human needs
• Innovation despite constraints– Bottom’s up, entrepreneurial
innovation
• New business models– Carriers? Advertisers? Media?
• New concerns – Security
• “Re-identification:” Relating a person to a trail of seemingly anonymous and homogenous data left across different locations
– Computer virus
– Mob behavior
• 6 Billion connections evenly distributed