It is difficult to believe that 2040 is closer than 1990. For most of us, the vision of life in the year 2040 is fuzzy, as we are focused on the daily stress of trying to keep up with a society that is changing faster and faster every day. Fortunately, there are many rural communities with forward-looking, independent communications leaders who have deployed fiber to the home; a technology which should keep up with the changing demands of a tech-based society without requiring forklift upgrades a few decades from now. City planners and policy-makers need to take a cue from my rural friends and plan for where things are going and not where they are today.
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How ONF is Accelerating the Open Software Defined Networking (SDN) Movement by Alan Weissberger
With so many “SDN” announcements that use proprietary specifications or functionality (e.g. AT&T Netbond and Network on Demand; Cisco, Arista Networks, etc.) many panelists/observers at the recent Open Networking Summit (ONS) said that “Open is the new Closed” or Open is the new word for Proprietary.” To get to the straight skinny of whether open networking is really open (or closed/proprietary), this author interviewed long time colleague Dan Pitt, PhD, Executive Director of the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) on the ONS show floor.
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A Cloud Protected from All the Elements
“You can make one phone call and talk to a doer,” says Clint Carter Director | Technology and New Service Introduction of Tennessee broadband service provider North Central Telephone Cooperative. Carter explains what differentiates NCTC from the behemoth data centers and cloud services is accessibility to the NCTC people. The NCTC staff live in the communities it serves and are able to provide an extra level of service, as compared to traditional cloud-based companies that typically have a chat box for a human interface.
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Broadband Grants in the Empire State
Peter Rasmusson, cofounder and CEO of FARR Technologies, discusses the broadband grants announced by the New York State Governor Cuomo in his 2015 State of the State address. He points out that these grants represent opportunities for all providers, incumbent or CLEC, to build fiber and/or wireless plant in areas that would otherwise be impossible to justify. One-time, 1:1 matching grants are proposed, so providers will have skin in the game.
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Eyes in the Back of My Head
“Eyes in the back of my head, a phrase that most kids have probably heard at least once from their mothers, is becoming reality in the form of racquetball-size cameras, like the one featured in this interview with Bubl CEO & Founder, Sean Ramsay. Ramsay demonstrates the Bublcam, Bubl’s four sensor camera/camcorder that provides a full 360 degree view of the world without any blind spots. This type of technology could be an interesting way for local content producers to inexpensively create content for virtual reality headsets and applications.
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Some Tweets and Short Thoughts
Click to View Verizon Digital Media Services as an enabler of OTT. Ted Middleton explains what they are doing to help content owners go over the top. At the same time, their end-to-end system, coupled with the purchase of the AOL assets, could effectively become a white-box IPTV systems for last-mile providers.
- Interesting, but superficial infographic on autonomous vehicles. A couple of things not considered, include the use of autonomous vehicles as an on-demand ride-sharing service. That will lower the cost of driving compared to ownership and the addition of autonomous features will be cheaper than paying a driver (e.g. Uber wants the eliminate the driver). Additionally, it doesn’t factor in the addition of V2V (Vehicle to Vehicle) and V2I (Vehicle to Infrastructure) communications, which is around the corner and, although not necessary for autonomous cars, makes them work that much better (e.g. letting the car ahead no there is the patch of ice).
- Two times this week, robo-callers have tricked me for a few seconds into thinking they were human and not machines. How long before it will be impossible to tell machine from human? Whether this leads to us being pets of robots as Steve Wozinak suggests or whether it leads to our demise, one thing is certain and that is life in 25 years will be different than today.
The Korner – The Transformation of Transportation Will Change the Built Environment
Society will soon face a change bigger than the Internet; the transformation of transportation into mobility solutions. Make no mistake that driving this transformation is the application of Internet technologies, along with mass adoption of low-cost, always-connected sensors connected to cloud intelligence. Some experts have predicted this change could mean virtually all vehicles on the road could be autonomous by the year 2050, with some even predicting that steering wheels could be outlawed by 2040.
Just as the car changed the way West Coast cities developed, mobility solutions offer the opportunity to rethink how we live and commute. These solutions combine new and improved technologies, such as electric power trains, connectivity (both vehicle and human) and machine intelligence, to increase the utilization of an asset (a car) that today is idle 96% of the time. BMW sees this change coming and as their aspiration is to “make mobility service so cheap only the rich will buy cars.”
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End Note:
If some of the transportation and technology developments occur as predicted, then Rod Stewart’s January, 1990, #1 song, “Downtown Train“, will feel especially dated in 2040.
