Future of the Web: A web visionary speaks

Came across this interesting and informative presentation ("Ten Questions Internet Execs should ask and answer")  by Mary Meeker, Morgan Stanley M.D.; delivered at the Web 2.0 Summit at San Francisco on Nov 16, 2010.


Meeker is head of the firm's global technology research unit (Latest Update 11/30: A Onetime 'Queen of the Net' Heads to Silicon Valley : Meeker moves to Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as a partner) . She has been called "Queen of the Net" by Barron's and was named "one of the ten smartest people in tech" by "Fortune" magazine in 2010. Her prognostications about the state and future of the Internet are much awaited and respected. Meeker helps set the tech agenda in her annual state of the Internet address at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

The 10 questions Meeker asks and answers are:

1. Globality
   Do you know which players in which countries do what you do better (or at least differently) than you do? Do you study / implement it?
2. Mobile
   Ramping faster than any ‘new new thing’ – is your business leading or lagging?
3. Social Ecosystems
   Would you rather be Apple, Google or…Facebook?
   Will their future directions help / hurt your business?
4. Advertising
   Ripe for innovation – will your business benefit?
5. Commerce
   ’Wal-Mart in your pocket’…location-based services…group buying power…flash sales… deep discounts…transparent pricing…real-time alerts / ratings…virtual goods...immediate gratification… Products must be fast + easy + fun.
   Have you ever seen ‘constant improvement’ in products like we are seeing now? Is your business keeping pace?
   Do humans want everything to be like a game?
6. Media
   What does the extraordinary ramp in on-demand video usage mean for your business?
7. Internet Company Leadership Evolution
   Shocking changes over just 6 years… are you prepared for next half decade of change?
8. Steve Jobs
   What’s his ‘secret sauce?’ Does your company have it?
9. Ferocious Pace of Change - What’s Next in Tech?
   When do consumers / enterprises & incumbents / attackers need you?
10. Closing Thoughts –
    Large companies do not typically support rapid growth rates of the magnitude that follow… will these trends continue? 

Food for thought!...not exactly what you needed as you visualize the food laden platters for Thanksgiving.


Happy Thanksgiving!

Ancient Indian Mathematics ; and the World Wide Web running out of IP addresses

Modern technologists have shown a remarkable lack of vision when envisaging the potential scope and spread of their innovations especially when dealing with numbers. Y2K, D10K etc, were manifestations of this malaise and now we come across the latest - the Internet may be in a danger of shut down as it runs out of IP addresses ("It sounds far-fetched, but a crisis with the potential to close off the Internet is imminent.").


How will my refrigerator talk to my toaster then? A big reason for running out of IP addresses is that almost every household device is Internet compatible now and has a unique IP address associated with it.


Juxtapose this against the logic of mathematicians of ancient India who had names for numbers as large as 10 to the power 17, yes 17


10 power 0      Eka
10 power 1      Dashah 
10 power 2      Shata
10 power 3      Sahasra
10 power 4      Ayuta
10 power 5      Laksha
10 power 6      Prayuta
10 power 7      Koti
10 power 8      Arbuda
10 power 9      Abja
10 power 10    Kharva
10 power 11    Nikharva
10 power 12    Mahapadma
10 power 13    Shankha
10 power 14    Jaladhi
10 power 15    Antya
10 power 16    Madhya
10 power 17    ParArdha.


Why? as early as 1st Century B.C.E. (perhaps even earlier) would they be wrapping their arms around such huge numbers baffles the imagination. 


The reasons were often mundane but can be well appreciated - like a prayer from Krishna Yajur Veda (4th Khanda, 4th Prashna)- a prayer and a wish for the wealth of cows to abound in large numbers, like millions and millions.  The counting of cows here goes by  hundreds, thousands, and thousands and millions of hundreds.


Now one can get an idea about the roots of a sense of exactitude even when things are nebulous - no , it's not God give me lots of cows but God give me a ParArdha cows!! ("..........parArdhashcemAme agna ishTakA dhenavassantu." - sanskrit)


So ye Gods of the Internet (aka "American Registry for Internet Numbers") move soon from the antiquated IP address of the type 74.125.227.19 (system offering roughly 4.3 billion possible IP addresses) to the the ones which look like fe80:43e3:9095:02e5:0216:cbff:feb2:7474 (offering 340,282,366,920,938,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 addresses......that should make the "cow counters" happy). In techspeak move from IPv4 to IPv6.


Now let me go back to counting sheep....or is it cows..sheep...cows...sheep.....zzzzz

Useful Resource: IPv4 / IPv6: The Bottom Line