Here is Honda's hydrogen car website. Chevrolet has a prototype called the Equinox. And here is an article written in 2003 by futurist Peter Schwartz and his GBN colleague Doug Randall.
Images from Honda website.
We might think of Apple as a computer company, Microsoft as a software company, and Google as a search engine (at least I do), but the lines between these distinctions are becoming increasingly fuzzy.
Adding context to data
eBooks/eDocs and/or devices are not ready for the education market yet. Amazon conducted Kindle DX trials at Darden B-school (U. of Virginia), Princeton and a number of other U.S. universities. The general conclusion was that while it is a good device for general reading, it was not ready for education because its not easy to highlight, annotate etc. or go to a particular page (since there are no true page numbers).
Meanwhile Swiss B-school IMD is giving the iPad a try and while its likely to have some of the same shortcomings as the Kindle, it appears to be a better tool for facilitating networking in the classroom and for accessing real time information. One of the motives for going digital is to reduce paper use and associated printing/shipping costs.
Clearly the education segment is not going to drive eBook adoption … and if the 'specialist segment' is large enough and distinct enough there could be different devices for different segments … but not soon. Cambridge, U.K. based company Plastic Logic developed a super-sleek device for the business segment called Que … one that would replace not just books but the entire briefcase ... and then changed its mind in August last year. Now its focussing on next generation foldable plastic displays.
January 28th 2011 is Data Privacy Day.
ChoicePoint Chairman and CEO Derek Smith made a distinction between the right to privacy and the right to anonymity … he accepted the former but not the latter. The debate over the right to privacy came up in the 1890s in the context of another new technology - photography … and its use in newspapers.
Recent inventions and business methods call attention to … what Judge Cooley calls the right "to be let alone".
Instantaneous photographs and newspaper enterprise have invaded the sacred precincts of private and domestic life; and numerous mechanical devices threaten to make good the prediction that "what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed from the house-tops." For years there has been a feeling that the law must afford some remedy for the unauthorized circulation of portraits of private persons; ... and the evil of invasion of privacy by the newspapers
In mid-Dec last year I was invited to talk by Eamon Kelly and Andrew Blau of GBN which is part of Monitor. GBN works on futures and in addition to the usual ecology / climate change / renewable energy they mentioned ubiquitous technology and connectivity. Later during discussions around the table the regional head of an agri-business company said he figures information has no value. Hmm ... maybe ... but consolidating scattered little bits of information has huge value.
ChoicePoint was bought out by LexisNexis (Reed Elsevier) in 2008 for US$3.5 billion ... these folks use supercomputers to gather, analyze and consolidate information. Another big player is Acxiom. These companies provide important services but are also controversial ... particularly from a privacy perspective. Here is a news report by the (late) Peter Jennings on what's being collected about you (in the U.S. anyways). Former Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy said: "Privacy is dead - get over it!"
Here are some slides with examples of Web 2.0 / Gov 2.0 … open government … open data … data mashups
Check out Crisis Mappers and O'Reilly's Where 2.0 conference for some video material.