Very interesting presentation from South by Southwest (SxSW) 2011. He's pretty candid about the longer-term threats embedded in a data-as-a-platform world, but also very interesting rewarding the opportunities for creating businesses out of data streams. For me, it's been worth multiple playings, even though it's almost an hour (but it works fine as background audio).
Beyond tech, I quite liked his general point about "It wasn't that the future [predicted in the 1960s/70s] wasn't magical, it was just sooner and stranger than we think." The crack about "I flew here on an airplane, courtesy of the Wright Brothers, and customer service, courtesy of Darth Vader" is also a keeper.
But the rest is equally worth your attention. Feel free to discuss among yourselves.
Been away a long time, and things are getting a bit quiet here. This post looks interesting. I hope to watch the talk and respond to it as soon as I get time.
However, I saw a column, Our Lefty Military by Nicholas Kristof, that seems like exactly the thing for this group to discuss. This is a way to suggest that.
Cheers, B.