Apple invented the PC. Microsoft invented that original rectangle: Windows 95. That was the peak year for Windows. Netscape slid in to suggest a browser is all you need. Google came to say, you don't even need a browser, you just need one site, a search engine, your gateway to all that there is online. Facebook came along to say you don't need the entire net, you just need people you know and you need to see the internet through that prism, let them filter it for you, it is too chaotic out there. Twitter came along to say people are important but not that important. All you need is bite size information, bite size communication. It is not who you know, since you can follow anyone you want. It is what you know, what you can know.
I guess you could start all over again with the mobile space, and claim, well, Apple went ahead and invented the iPhone all over again. So watch the drama unfold.
But about the big rectangle itself? What's next there?
Right now I am more interested in posing the question than attempting an answer, although I guess I could take shots, make guesses, offer vagueness. Be nebulous.
But then I personally might be more interested in stuff beyond the rectangle. The rectangle is fascinating, but not of primary professional interest to me. I am more interested in Web 3.0, or what I call Web 3.0. (Web 5.0 Is Da Bomb, Competing For the Web 3.0 Definition)
What is that journey from big, ugly mainframes to PCs to Twitter? Can it be argued that we have tried to get closer to the human dimension? And beyond? On Twitter, it can be argued we are at though process level. So it really is about people, right?
And if each human being is unique, the web is so much poorer for every human being who is not yet online.
I moved to New York City to work on my tech startup, but got distracted for a few years by some urgent political work for Nepal, best work I ever did so far: the king of the country had pulled a coup, now we are a republic. Obama 2008 furthered the distraction, kind of.
But Nepal does not go away, Obama does not go away. 75% of the work on Nepal is done, 25% remains, only Nepal does not have to be my sole preoccupation no more. So recently I got into a little online discussion at a private online group. In the course of making my moves I went to check out my Nepal mailing list, the largest in the world. I hit a message that said the mailing list had been removed by Google. I panicked. There was no way for me to contact Google Groups directly.
So I wrote to Google directly on Twitter. And it worked like magic. My mailing list is back. It deserves to be. It played a key role in Nepal's democracy and social justice movements.
Looks like Cisco wants to do to data centers what Apple did to cellphones with its iPhone.
In this tight economy it is but natural that once partners will elbow into each other's space. But that is the cynical view to take. This is a story in innovation. As to how it will play out, we will have to wait and watch.
Tech companies like Amazon and Oracle have swam upstream in this dire economy. And now Cisco has come up with a major announcement. This will boost the morale of the larger economy. Otherwise it feels like there is bad news on every page of the newspaper.
Cisco's Unified Computing System stirs competition, old and new Search Networking One Cisco Unified Computing System beats 15 coal-fired energy plantsZDNet A single Cisco chassis can hold as many as eight blade servers. A “networking fabric extender” can tie together 40 such chassis, bringing 320 servers under the control and supervision of Cisco’s Unified Computing System Manager software. ...... Every second, Web users view 1,200 videos on YouTube, share 11,000 songs and send 2,000,000 emails. This plus the equivalent of 3,000,000 trees turned into paper and printed can fit in the system memory of one Cisco Unified Computing System. ........ All 138,893,908 Individual Tax returns filed last year in the United States could be stored in the memory of one Cisco Unified Computing System. ....... It takes only 40% of the Cisco UCS’s system resources to host all of the US Wikipedia. ...... The amount of obsolete cabling and support infrastructure that could be eliminated equates to 3,007 miles of legacy servers and infrastructure, when set side by side. ......... 31,103,864,053 Kilowatt hours per year saved, by unifying aging traditional servers and supporting infrastructure. .......
This could:
Double the available electricity in the ten poorest countries worldwide increasing education, healthcare, and overall standard of living.
Equal the energy output of more than 15 U.S. coal-fired electric plants and 35 million tons of C02.
Almost equal the entire amount of wind energy produced in U.S.
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