Obama vs Apple: the power and potential of technology

Technology trumps politics

An interesting article on the power and potential of technology from online magazine Slate (www.slate.com). For the original article and links, go to http://www.slate.com/id/2242662/

Which is more important: politics or technology?
By William Saletan

Posted Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2010, at 11:59 PM ET

When the White House announced that President Obama would deliver his State of the Union message on Jan. 27—the same day Apple was planning to unveil its new tablet computer—many of us at Slate cringed. “What is Obama thinking?” one of my colleagues joked. “He’s going to be totally overshadowed.”

The idea of a product rollout trumping the president’s annual speech to Congress does seem funny. Maybe the tablet will be a bust. Maybe Obama will rock the world. But the opposite is at least as likely. This isn’t Obama’s fault. It’s just the way the world is going: Technology, as a driver of social change, is overtaking politics.

Look around the globe. One of every three people in China now uses the Internet. The same is true in Iran. Hundreds of millions of users are on Facebook, often communicating across borders. Four billion people now have mobile phones. India has nearly 400 million; Bangladesh has another 50 million. And phones are getting smarter. Apple has sold 50 million iPhones and iPod Touches. Another 25 million people use BlackBerrys. In the United States, the number of text messages sent each month has passed 100 billion.

How powerful is wireless communication? Consider this: Three years ago, we upgraded the software of two vehicles on Mars. On Earth, we’re mobilizing people and solving problems at unprecedented speed. Last month, the U.S. government put 10 red balloons in random places around the country and challenged contestants to find them. The winning team, using social networking, succeeded in less than nine hours.
Gadgets have swept the world before, but mobile computing devices are different. Through applications and upgrades, they can acquire new powers. Apple alone offers more than 100,000 apps and has delivered more than two billion downloads. Phones are becoming maps, TVs, libraries, shopping tools, video cameras, car keys, and credit cards.

In more and more places, machines are running the world. On stock exchanges, high-speed computers armed with trading algorithms and superior pattern recognition are thrashing human competitors. Airline autopilots have become so reliable that human pilots can check out. In cars, software is beginning to assume responsibility for steering, braking, and parking. Drones are patrolling our borders, catching humans who try to sneak in. Computers are telling child welfare agencies whether to take kids away from parents. Programs are running “virtual call centers,” measuring the output of dispersed salespeople and routing customer phone calls to the best performers. Computers don’t just work for us anymore. We work for them.

Thanks to connectivity and mobile devices, terrorists can do more harm. Scouts in Europe use the Internet to recruit jihadist warriors for Iraq. Insurgents in Afghanistan use cell phones to detonate bombs. A year ago, terrorists slaughtered scores of people in Mumbai with the help of BlackBerrys, satellite phones, GPS, aerial image files, and voice-over-Internet-protocol. But networked devices also help us thwart such plots. In Pakistan, remote-controlled CIA drones hunt al-Qaida and Taliban commanders. U.S. military strategists are laying contingency plans for cyberwar. There’s even an iPhone app being developed to help soldiers monitor enemy positions.

Networks also multiply our power to help each other. Through the Internet, African entrepreneurs are obtaining microcredit loans. People in developing countries are using phones to research candidates and monitor elections. Doctors in India are diagnosing patients in Ethiopia. In the week after Haiti’s earthquake, a campaign for $10 text-message donations to the Red Cross raised $25 million. That’s 250,000 responses.
In cyberspace, a new world is unfolding. People are paying real money—$5 billion a year, by some estimates—for avatars and other virtual products. Google has just patented a system for selling ads that would appear as billboards and posters not in the physical world but in the cached online world of Google Street View. And Israel, one of the world’s most hard-nosed countries, recently released 19 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for video of a captured Israeli soldier. The deal wasn’t for the soldier. It was for the video.

What happens in Vegas may stay in Vegas, but what happens online has real effects. Drivers engrossed in cell-phone calls and text messages are crashing real cars and killing real people. Meanwhile, millions of Americans have married or developed long-term relationships with people they met online. People are dead, and new people have been born, because of what happens in cyberspace.

Over the long term, politics can’t compete with technology’s power. Look at Obama’s latest proposals to make college more affordable. They’re a pittance compared to the cost-cutting force of online education. Millions of Americans are taking college courses through the Internet for $200 per credit or less. MIT, the Princeton Review, and other heavyweights are extending this option to more people here and abroad.

Or look at medicine. While Obama struggles to cut costs, the health-care industry is engaging networked monitoring devices, tracking software, and two-way video cameras so that doctors can supervise more patients in less time. Better yet, the latest wireless implants allow doctors anywhere in the world to look directly at what’s going on in your body. The same goes for surgery. Last year, doctors in this country removed 80,000 prostate glands indirectly, by operating consoles that control surgical machines. Insert a broadband connection, and those surgeries can be done remotely.

Politics can harness technology and sometimes influence it. Obama owes his election in part to digital microtargeting, online network-building, and a list of 13 million email addresses. But more often, technology overwhelms politics. Around the world, information networks are shaking the foundations of authoritarian regimes. In Iran, cell-phone cameras have exposed state brutality [warning: violent imagery], and email chains have relayed incriminating videos out of the country. In Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova, tweets and text messages have mobilized mass protests.

Governments are trying hard to control this technology. And they’re failing. Flash drives, memory sticks, and smuggled satellite dishes have foiled Cuba’s efforts to block Internet access. Egypt, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Thailand have resorted to old-fashioned arrests, hoping to intimidate dissidents they can’t isolate online.

The most aggressive censors, China and Iran, use filtering software to monitor Web content and block sites they don’t like. China also has an army of human censors 40,000 strong. But no army or great wall can stop a viral epidemic. Through downloads, emails, and instant messages, troublemakers abroad continue to supply Chinese and Iranian citizens with software that lets them sneak out. By routing their queries and messages through foreign proxy servers, these citizens can see and communicate with the outside world. Their bodies are trapped inside their nations’ firewalls, but their minds roam free.

Will the Apple tablet overshadow Obama? I don’t know. But here’s my bet: If this week ends up being remembered for a political speech, it won’t be Obama’s. It’ll be the speech Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered Thursday. Clinton denounced Internet censorship around the world as an “information curtain” akin to the Iron Curtain of the Soviet era. She championed the “freedom to connect”—an updated, online version of freedom of assembly. And she outlined a place for politics in the march of information technology. “On their own, new technologies do not take sides in the struggle for freedom and progress,” she observed. “But the United States does. We stand for a single internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas.”

That’s a pretty good manifesto for the next century. We don’t have to be bigger than tomorrow’s machines. We just have to teach them and their users to play well with others.

So what is Web 3.0?

In its current state, the Web is often described as being in the Lego phase, with all of its different parts capable of connecting to one another. Those who envision the next phase, Web 3.0, see it as an era when machines will start to do seemingly intelligent things. – John Markoff, The New York Times

(with thanks to mediabistro for the quote)

Webwise: Building Business on the web – pt 3 – making your website more effective

How can you ensure that your website is working as effectively as possible for your business? Here are two simple rules to follow:

1. Focus on what you want visitors to your website to do:
   In my last column I wrote about the importance of focusing on why people should be visiting your website, and what you want them to do when they get there. Remember that on average, people only spend 2-3 minutes on a website, so you don’t have long to get your message across. Whatever your priority – selling products or services online, building positive word of mouth, reassuring prospective clients of your expertise, generating sales appointments, or creating a database of customer information – make sure your website does this quickly, simply and consistently.
2. Make sure you can be found:
   There are now millions of websites, so making sure your prospective customers can find you easily is an essential part of building your business on the web. Free tools such as Google Analytics (www.google.co.uk/analytics) show you how people come to your site – whether from another website or through a search engine, and which search terms (keywords) they are using to find you. As a first step in building a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy, make sure that these keywords and other likely or relevant search terms are included throughout your website. This makes it more likely that when a prospective customer searches for your products or services, your site will appear in their search results.

In next month’s column I’ll be outlining how you can develop an effective SEO strategy using simple tools and techniques to increase your website’s profile online and generate increased visitor traffic.

WEBWISE – building business on the web – Part 1

Fiona Mulliner is Managing Director of Jumpstart Design Ltd, a specialist digital design and communications agency based in Horsham.

Fiona’s previous international positions as Vice President, Marketing for media multinational News Corporation, and General Manager, Joint Ventures for BBC Worldwide has given her a wealth of commercial, marketing and communications experience. She sits on the Executive Council of Cadia, the Gatwick Diamond Business Association, has a professional qualification in Marketing, and is active in a number of creative and digital industry organisations.

Welcome to a new column that aims to help businesses become more effective online – whether that’s in terms of increased sales, better promotion, enhanced marketing or improved productivity. Over the next few months we’ll be exploring different areas of digital communications, including using the web to support and extend your overall brand and marketing strategy, designing a website that works for your business, making sure your business can be found easily on search engines (Search Engine Optimisation), how to use social media to reach new audiences, and how to track and measure your online success.

As we all know, the web is big business. A recent study by Uswitch reveals that UK broadband users spend on average 30 hours per week online. On a typical working day, around 67% of people use the internet to find deals, discounts and vouchers. 93% of broadband subscribers use the internet to shop online, with 79% spending two hours a week shopping online. Internet advertising spend has now overtaken TV advertising. According to the latest Internet Advertising Bureau report, online advertising spend in first two quarters of 2009 reached £1.75 billion. Reuters’ analysis shows that paid-for search on sites such as Google grew 6.8% from the first half of 2008 to 2009, accounting for £1.05 billion, or 60% of all online advertising expenditure.

What does this mean for businesses promoting their products and services online? Simply that it is now essential to understand the strategies and tools that can deliver more effective digital communications in order to stand out from the crowd, reach your target audience and build your business online. As a starting point, it is useful to consider two key questions: “What is my business really about – its “brand promise”? And “Does everything we do on the web truly reflect that promise?” The answers to those questions should enable you to begin to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of your digital communications.

To Tweet or not to Tweet? How Twitter is changing the way we do business

Twitter is the most talked-about addition to the social media phenomenon of MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo Pulse et al. Launched in 2007 with over 30 million users worldwide, Twitter enables individuals and companies to update their friends, clients and contacts (“followers”) about their activities, ideas and opinions with real-time 140 character entries through their computer or mobile device.

Although Twitter started as a consumer service, it is rapidly being adopted by businesses to exploit its sales and marketing potential. Through its real-time communication “tweets”, Twitter enables businesses to carry out customer research, gather information and advice, respond to customer queries, promote special offers and recruit employees. Its ability to offer measurable and instantaneous results is unique.

A striking example of its commercial success is computer multinational Dell, which has made more than $3m through Twitter ($2m in direct sales through Twitter-exclusive promotions, and a further $1m indirectly through increased traffic to the dell.com website), but there are many other examples to consider as potential models for commercial development. Whole Foods, the American organic food supermarket chain, has over 650,000 “followers” on its main Twitter account, and a further 40 accounts tailored to specific consumer subgroups such as people seeking recipe ideas.

If you’re not already “tweeting”, consider testing Twitter to reach current and potential clients, share information and build your brand. Consider your offering, your audience and tailor your tweets appropriately – it has the potential to become a powerful addition to your marketing programme.