Lean by Design

First came the computer revolution – reducing information storage costs and improving data manipulation and insights as a result of the digitization of human generated data.

Then came the communication (internet) revolution – increasing information leverage (technical and financial) due to the improved convenience of information access and reduced cost of information sharing and collaboration.

Now comes the Sensor Network revolution – reducing real-time data acquisition costs associated with physical systems, due to the availability of low cost sensors and ultra low powered radios.

This latest revolution in information technology will have an equally profound impact on the economy and business as did the previous two “revolutions”. The dramatic reduction in data acquisition costs will enable entire new industries around sensor derived information. Medicine is likely going to be one of the key beneficiaries of these changes. Once it becomes cost effective to monitor people’s vital signs and other biometrics in real-time and on a continuous basis, whole new avenues for practicing healthcare, will open up. New science related to Stream based processing of large and concurrent volumes of data will be developed. Ways of predicting heart failure and strokes will be discovered by virtue of the fact that it will become practical to monitor blood pressure on a continuous basis and under a broad set of conditions – something that has not been practical before. It will now be possible to determine precisely when a patient has had a stroke, enabling more timely and effective treatments.

The range of potential applications, from health care to agriculture, to security, and beyond is enormous. The full spectrum of discoveries that it will enable, cannot even be fathomed today. What we can be sure of, however, is that like the previous information technology revolutions, this revolution will have tremendous implications for economic productivity, for those with the vision to harness it. Sensor information occurring within the context of a broader context of data will facilitate productivity improvements. In agriculture, sensor networks will allow for the optimal application of costly fertilizer and water, thus providing significant productivity gains. Body sensor networks in medicine will also enable earlier and more rapid diagnosis of health issues, resulting in lower medical costs and improved efficacy of treatments.

This latest information technology revolution will provide an enormous stimulus for new business and will be as exciting as the previous two revolutions.

Here is an early indication of things to come …

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The following video (a bit long) purportedly documents the conspiracy that led to the murder of an Hamas military commander – Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, It is amazing for at least two reasons:

1. it provides facinating insight into how a real-life assination plot might have been carried out
2. it illustrates the power of video surveilance and related technologies to help solve very complex crimes

If you have time it is worth a look.

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It occurred to me while watching a recent keynote address by Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, that the real threat Google represents to others in the ICT industry, is in the next generation computing platforms that they are developing. They are creating an almost insurmountable lead in Platform technologies that will power virtually all machine and system level intelligence in the future. They are set to become the “Intel Inside” of the internet and virtually all computing in the future. Perhaps this is old news to some, and silly conspiracy talk to others, but this perspective crystallized for me as I watched the MWC keynote speech by Eric Schmidt.

The many end user applications like Buzz, that Google is putting out, are mere distractions. What really counts, are the enabling technologies that Google continues to develop and refine. These technologies are all rooted in clever graph traversal algorithms, machine learning and Stream Processing technology that underpinned Google’s early success in Internet search. Google is reinventing embedded applications like image processing (consider Google Goggles), and voice recognition, using largely Cloud based computing resources and exploiting their core search technologies mentioned above.

While IBM and others have invested heavily in Stream Based and Complex Event Processing systems, Google continues to innovate practical uses that are driving evolution of the internet. And in the process, they are changing the economics of computing as well as the location of intelligence in the network. For the past two decades intelligence has shifted from central mainframes out towards the periphery of the network, and now that momentum is shifting toward the Cloud. The Cloud won’t simply dominate traditional server and desktop applications. Increasingly, embedded applications will migrate into the Cloud / Googleplex, and this could have a profound impact on the nature of end user computing hardware. Increasingly these products will become simple input, display and sensing devices. The stage is now set for the realization of a suite of true internet appliances, the likes of which were first conceived almost 15 years ago.

Data and the volume of data is absolutely critical to the effectiveness of contemporary intelligence methods, and so he who controls the larger data bases will be able to offer superior capabilities. And Google is obviously well positioned in this regard. So what will happen to innovation? Well, I would suggest that it will be very difficult for the normal engines of innovation in our economy – start-ups – to succeed with anything but innovations on the fringe. Unless the data is freely available to all, the largest companies – i.e. Google – will have a huge advantage. Device and application innovation will become more important to entrepreneurs as infrastructure or platform innovation will become more difficult.

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