Dave Stone aka. builtbydave </>

Is the obesity of wildlife related in anyway to obesity in population?

b) why? Attributable where… more fast food restaurants → population eating more on the move → more waste in public space → increased scavenging in wildlife → wildlife obesity?

With the growing trend of Netbooks, is the digital divide closing because developed nations are moving towards cheaper, less powerful, less complex systems?

We use maps to show growth & spread of religion, why not use maps to show growth & spread of science?

How will future technologies affect language, i.e. when Space travel becomes a norm, what words are created or evolve?

b) Can we look to the past for clues and/or patterns? i.e. phone vs mobile vs iPhone.

Netbooks, I don’t get ‘em. I see them as incomplete & only a bridging technology. Don’t read me wrong, I like the idea of Netbooks & it’s that which brings me to thinking of them as bridging technology; they’re just smaller, cheaper laptops.

Wikipedia:

A netbook (a portmanteau of Internet and notebook) is a class of laptop computer designed for wireless communication and access to the Internet.”

Smaller, cheaper laptops — that doesn’t warrant a “designed for wireless communication and access to the Internet” stamp. For starters, where’s my built in 3G (or any OTA technologies).

Bridging technology? So maybe technology is the wrong word — it’s breaking the consumers cycle of more Mhz, Ghz, bigger numbers, more powerful machines… for my spreadsheet. It’s choosing functionality over stats. So far the functionality isn’t a “design for wireless communication and access to the Internet”, it’s portability. It’s a step in the right direction & priming us for what will come.

Web applications & SaaS rise of recent years has removed many responsibilities from the end-user, responsibilities they never wanted (security, technology, etc) and leaves them with ownership of the responsibilities they always wanted (i.e. data ownership). The technologies; modern browsers, Google Gears, constant connectivity (a work in progress, of varying speeds & more common in some parts of the world than others) has contributed a lot as well.

The Netbook I see takes this further. The Netbook I want takes this further.

Google Gears does a great job of online/offline sync within web applications. Apple iTunes does a great job of application sync between phone, notebook, & OTA into the cloud (I’ll use “sync” as real sync / automated download and (optionally) install / caching, as one term. To the end-user it’s much of a muchness). Imagine, an operating system with sync at its core, sync the operating system, the applications, the content. The OS provider is responsible for the operating system, the software developer for the applications, and the end-user for the data whom is in control of both the OS & the applications.

Both native & web applications would probably blend a little from the end-users perspective in this OS — I mean it is “designed for wireless communication and access to the Internet” — like on the iPhone, I access both native & web applications via icons on the dashboard. Let’s do the same with Dock (or Start Menu for you Windows users). Fluid, Prism, AIR, etc. are already helping this transition.

Enter Apple.

Rumors of Apple doing a Netbook are circling, and while I know nothing (no doubt I’d be NDA’d if I did…) consider:

• Operating system, check. They could roll this out.
• Application sync, check. It’s in iTunes.
• Web application sync, not yet… but with Webkit being licensed they’ve a sizable market share to role that out to. (spot why Chrome isn’t 100% Webkit!)
• Customers, check. That “get it”, check. Because they’ve been using web & native applications side by side on all devices, check. That’d upgrade, check.
• Small, light notebooks designed for OTA, check.

Looks good, but Apple has high user experience rules… that costs. Netbooks are cheap (in cost). If only there was a way to subsidize the cost of fabrication, say with an App Store. Oh wait…

You can figure the rest out.

If shopping online came before high street shopping, would high street shopping have been invented? Invested in? If so, for what industries & why?

Eric Schmidt on Charlie Rose — this quote from 53m42s in, full interview.

Yes. Technologists as a group tend to be: more analytical; more data driven; more personally liberal; more willing to tolerate the differences in people; more global in their focus. People in technology believe you can create whole new businesses.

In my dealings with other business they often seem to be locked in a paradigm that was given to them by their grandfather; this is the economic structure; this is the industrial structure; this is how it’s always been done.

Technologists as a group believe that you can literally change the world from technology.

 To what extent does light pollution stop us seeing the beauty of the sky & halt our inquisitive nature to explore?

 Given technology is a leader of war, as technologists what are we doing to stop war?