July 5th, 2015 • Posted in Featured, General Observations
There is a seismic shift rippling through the entire economy, but it’s difficult to observe because it is invisible. I call this change “vaporized”. When my clients ask me to explain what is happening to consumer electronics devices, fixed media and even retail stores, I tell them that these things — and a great many others — are being vaporized: that is, they’ve been replaced by digital software.
The process of dematerialization has been most noticeable in the media and entertainment industries during the past decade. Half a century’s growth was wiped out in less than a decade in the newspaper, magazine, and recording industries as digital software changed the habits of hundreds of millions of consumers. The television industry is going through this process right now.
This process is not limited to media and content: even the devices that play digital content have been transformed. Your digital camera, video camera, handheld game consoles, DVD player, voice recorder, GPS unit and about a dozen other devices have all been replaced by an app on your smartphone. The vaporized version is much better than they old physical version: it’s cheaper, easier to use, weightless, customizable and, since it is built into your smartphone, it’s always with you and yet it takes up no extra space. If you don’t like the default app that came with your phone, simply click to download a different one.
But media and consumer electronics are just the leading edge of the change. More than one million apps for your smartphone have replaced things that were previously sold as physical products. Today, the process of dematerialization is happening in several fields at once: finance and payment systems, automobile ownership and transportation, labor and manufacturing, health care and medicine. It’s easy to predict that several other fields will be transformed in the near future, including government, the military, the insurance industry and many others. Vaporization is set to transform the entire economy, and with it, consumer society.
To gain a better understanding of this process, I wrote a book called “Vaporized: Solid Strategies for Success In A Dematerialized World.” The book will be published in 
September 2015 by Lifetree Media. You can pre-0rder it now on Amazon.
In December 2014, I was invited to give one of the opening keynote speeches at the Turkey Innovation Week exposition in Istanbul. You can watch my keynote speech about Vaporized right here.
Tags: book, dematerialization, keynote speech, mobile innovation, mobile internet, Mobile phone, Smartphone, software, vaporized
April 24th, 2012 • Posted in Conferences, General Observations, Video Clips
In my previous post, I shared the first half of the transcript for my opening keynote speech about the future of television at the PrimeTime conference in Ottawa in March. Below you will find the text for the second half of the complete transcript for my speech. This section focuses on Facebook’s impact on social media, Google’s impressive collection of video properties, and it concludes with speculation about how the future media landscape will be controlled. The final section includes a quick survey of the amazing diversity of original video content on digital platforms. Enjoy.
THE FOLLOWING IS THE SECOND HALF OF THE TRANSCRIPT.
To read the first half, click here.
Continue Reading
Tags: Apple, Conferences, digital media, Future of Media, Future of Social Media, future of TV, Google, innovation, Mobile phone, public speaking, social media, social software, speeches, television, Twitter
December 20th, 2009 • Posted in General Observations
“Never make forecasts, especially about the future.” Wise advice from Samuel Goldwyn. Which I am now about to ignore at my peril. Here’s my take on what to expect in 2010.
1. The Dawn of Ambient Awareness & Networked Consciousness
What happens when real-time status updates and news feeds are combined with GPS location data and context-aware computing? You may experience a new kind of awareness that leverages the perceptions and commentary of other people. You might call it collective intelligence. And it will make you smarter. Continue Reading
Tags: Android, augmented reality, collaborative creativity, connected consciousness, design, devices, digital media, flat screen, flexible screens, future of TV, future trends, hardware, innovation, IPhone, Mobile phone, networked consciousness, OLED, Smartphone, social media, social software
June 14th, 2009 • Posted in General Observations
During the past 24 hours the Iranian government has attempted to shut down mainstream media, confiscating TV cameras from ABC and other news organizations, in an effort to supress coverage of the aftermath of a disputed Presidential election. Major media has been unable to cover the ongoing demonstrations, street protests and increasingly violent clashes. CNN weekend anchor Don Lemon has been reduced to pulling news from Twitter.
Yes, Twitter is being featured as a primary source in CNN coverage. CNN is also dependent upon their iReporter feature and other social media sources from around the web. Is this the triumph of two-way media over traditional broadcast media? See this post from the BBC for a long list of examples that illustrate how a variety of web sites are providing real-time coverage. For authoritarian governments, Continue Reading
Tags: Broadcasting, China, Demonstration, Don Lemon, Facebook, Government of the People's Republic of China, Mobile phone, People's Republic of China, protest, social media, Twitter
October 16th, 2008 • Posted in General Observations
Next week I will travel to Rome to give a keynote speech to the Nokia Developer Summit. Some friends have asked me why. Given the recent release of the Gooogle Android phone and the Apple iPhone 3G, there has been a surge of commentary about the smartphones in the tech blogs. The general thrust of such blog posts is that the newcomers will transform the mobile industry.
I disagree. The newcomers may have an impact, perhaps an outsized impact, but in reality the primary driver of change in mobile is one of the old giants: Nokia. No major mobile technology company comes close to Nokia in its support of open standards, open software and open APIs. And no company comes close to challenging Nokia’s 30%+ market share. Continue Reading
Tags: Android, Apple, GSM, innovation, IPhone, mobile, Mobile game, Mobile phone, Nokia, Smartphone
September 2015 by Lifetree Media. You can pre-0rder it now on Amazon.
