Web 2.0 Summit 08: Bob Sutor (IBM), High Order Bit
- The world is smaller and flatter, but is it smarter?
- The news reveals that we are now at an 'inflection point'. Are we going to decline or are we going to keep growing?
- We need big changes now, particularly around the IT industry around the world.
- It will take partnerships.
- The system itself has to be smart and intelligent.
- We have powerful technologies, instrumentation and 'nerves' in our system and processing power.
- The good news is that with RFIDs we are moving towards 30 Billion tags in 3 years. In 2011 we will have 1 billion connected devices. In 2010 we will have 1 Billion transistors for each human.
- The IBM Roadrunner broke the Peta Flop barrier (1 thousand trillion calculations per second.
- The question is what do we do with all this?
- The amount of connectivity and processing power far exceeds the good things we are doing with them.
- Are we putting them to good use?
- There is risk in home mortgages, insurance, investments etc. We try to spread the risk around but we should be understanding, tracking and managing the risk.
- Are we using power optimally? We are loosing some power while sending it to every device
- Traffic: In the US traffic congestion costs 78 Billion annually including both gasoline and productivity.
- Supply Chains: 40 Billion is lost on inefficient supply chains.
- We have a convergence between the concrete infrastructure and the IT infrastructure.
- This means from full potential to being intelligent.
- Some progress was made in Stockholm in making transportation better.
- Similar projects are in the works in England and Singapore.
- In Germany, RFID is used to keep track of meat in supermarkets and prevent the spread of mad cow disease.
- We have complicated systems to be more efficient.
- Rivers like the Hudson are monitored with sensors to check pollution.
- Solar power has to be attacked from 3 directions:
- Try to maginfy solar power without melting equipment
- Solar cells: 100 times thinner and can be almost painted on laptops
- The world needs big bets: Public/private partnerships
- Good time politically for these changes
- New types of collaborative, cooperative leaders
- We must deal with privacy and security at the same time.
- Use open source and standards.
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