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

Thanks

http://wordle.net