Volume 01

Editor: Hafsa Siddiqua

Knowledge sharing challenge

www.facebook.com/theconnaissancemagzine

01 Febraury 2014

about other states vying to host their own drones test sites, in order to get a hand in any future economic goodies that come from having a vibrant drone innovation sector. States might begin to woo drone tech companies, the same way they woo tech startups as part of a broader attempt to revitalize their economies. Virtual reality becomes the next big science fiction technology to go mainstream In 2014, the one science fiction technology that is finally showing signs of going mainstream is virtual realBY DOMINIC BASULTO ity. Much of the innovation for now is being driven by Google Glass becomes the must-have tech gadget of the year. the gaming market, where the Oculus Rift virtual realAfter flirting with wearable tech in 2012 and 2013, the consumer ity headset for 3D Gaming is due to come to market by technology market is finally ready to embrace wearable computing mid-2014. as a full-on trend in 2014. And the biggest entrant in the wearable computing market is almost certain to be Google Glass. Theres But gaming is just the tip of the iceberg. People are already thinking of ways that virtual been almost as much anti-hype as hype around Google Glass over reality could change everything from retail experiences to entertainment experiences. the past 12 months, but its a safe bet that if Google Glass is cool Ford automobile designers are even working on ways to use the Oculus Rift to design enough for the runway models of DVF and the fashion spreads of better cars. Bill Gates amazes us again Vogue, its also cool enough for the mainstream tech consumer with another innovation whos looking to move beyond the smartphone. A t the beginning of each year, its possible for the developing world. Your next-door neighbor becomes a Bill Gates continues to enventure capitalist to make predictions about the future of the tice us with his vision for The JOBS Act (aka the Crowdfunding tech sector. It doesnt require a crystal ball changing the future of the Act) is set to go into full effect by middeveloping world, primarily 2014, and that could lead to anyone to realize that smartphones and tablets will by creating new innovanot just a wealthy accredited investor replace PCs, big data will continue to grow tions that can lower mortality rates. In just the past few years, having the ability to invest in startat an exponential rate, and nations such as as he reminded us last summer, Bill Gates has turned into a ups, anywhere in the country and in any digital age Leonardo Da Vinci. Its only a matter of time before industry. In short, it will soon be almost China will play an ever-greater role in the he amazes us again with a simple, clever innovation for the as easy to back a hot tech company on a new equity crowdfunding portal development of the Internet. Below is an worlds rising billions that addresses a basic need like clean as it is to crowdfund a cool artistic project on Kickstarter or Indiegogo. sanitation. In the process, expect to see a lot of Whats the future of the VC indus- attempt at thinking big, at imagining how a As the developing world starts to catch up to the try? articles. Its only natural, since crowdfunding seems to have the ponumber of emerging trends may combine in developed world, its only inevitable that nations across tential to disrupt the traditional VC industry by creating an entirely new Asia, Africa and Latin America will begin to attract more attentype of investor. And once its your temperamental next-door neighbor, unique ways to create disruptive trends in tion from the Wests top innovators. Weve already started to and not a cooly rational Harvard MBA making the decision of where to 2014. see this in Africa, where innovations in mobile banking and allocate investment dollars, this could lead to some fantastic innovations mobile health are occurring as fast or faster than in the being funded in coming years. United States. In a best-case scenario, there will be a virtuous circle, as innovations in A commercial drone company gets anointed as the next Apple. health complement innovations in mobile and Internet. The excitement around the Amazon drones delivery concept is Bitcoin revolutionizes politics almost certain to inspire a number of copycat imitators. After the Insurgencies and uprisings around the world espeJeff Bezos 60 Minutes segment at the end of the year, there was cially in the Arab world have been quick to use new a surge in stories about possible uses for commercial drone techtechnologies everything from smartphones for rapnology, including the story of quad copters being used by Deutsche idly organizing protests to Twitter for getting their Post. As drones transition from being used to take out terrorist message out to the world. So why not Bitcoin? Couldleaders to being used to revolutionize business models, well inevint sovereign states such as the United States use Bittably hear talk about the first generation of drone start-ups that coin to fund rebel groups say, the Syrian rebels are the next Apple or the next Google. One early front-runner is New York-based Flyterra, which so as not to leave behind a paper trail for the media to is set to start testing drones in upstate New York, making it one of the first commercial drones comfollow. In other words, Bitcoin could help avoid another Iran-Contra Affair. panies in the nation. Six states (including New York and Virginia, both home to huge tech communities) have now been Bitcoin, or any of the other emerging crypto-currencies, are perfect for insurgents cleared to host drones-testing facilities. If the first rounds of testing go well, we could soon hear talk anonymous, hard-to-track and just as good as cash. For that matter, they are also perfect

Futurism

Bold predictions for 2014

for mainstream politicians. Its only a matter of time before politicians are able to accept Bitcoin, and that could lead to an awkward situation where you really dont know whos funding a candidate. In Texas, one Senate campaign could feature Bitcoin in 2014. And, if Bitcoin truly is anonymous (and theres been debate about that), money could be theoretically funneled to mainstream political candidates to circumvent current campaign donation limits. DIY biology becomes the next big tech hobbyist trend, replacing 3D printing. Just as 3D printing captured the public imagination by radically changing our notions of what it is possible to create in the physical world, DIY biology could have the same impact on the way we view the biological world. Thanks to Craig Venters pioneering efforts to map the human genome more than a decade ago, the average person now has the potential to understand his or her own genetic destiny, and thats leading to the arrival of new startups like 23andMe as well as new DIY biology hacker spaces. The only question, of course, is how the DIY biologists and geneticists cope with the legal, moral and philosophical questions of their work. As weve seen with 23andMe, its not always so easy to gain regulatory approval and thats even before the hackers get involved. In some futuristic scenarios proposed by Craig Venter, its also possible for biologists to hack the genetic code of some microorganisms, leading to radical new mutations and new forms of life. Most likely, in 2014, youll start to see more crowd funding efforts of the type pioneered by the Glowing Plants project in 2013, which raised nearly half a million dollars to make possible genetically modified glow-in-the-dark plants. The world sees the first-ever 3D-printed organ Organovo, a biotech company in San Diego, recently claimed that it would have a 3D-printed liver ready to go by the end of 2014. So far, organs have been too complex to print, but there have been limited successes with things such as human tissue and bone. It appears to be only a matter of time before 3D-printed organs become a reality, thanks to new high-tech bio printers. This growth in 3D-printed organs will lead to a number of debates about a whole range of possible industries that may be possible in the future, such as cosmetic internal surgery, in which you receive brand-new organ transplants. It would be like the scenario in the science fiction film Elysium, where the wealthy are never sick because they could presumably simply swap out unhealthy organs whenever needed.

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Volume 01

Knowledge sharing challenge

and it doesn't matter what type of TV you happen to own. It happened with radio and the tele- vent us from turning social into a protocol. In many ways, Facebook is like Apple. graph, and even satellite communication. It happened with our light bulbs, electric outlets, coffee Why, for instance, can't you buy iBooks on your Android phone? Surely there is a machines, kitchen stoves, washing machines, the rims on our cars, and the windows and doors in market for that? The reason is simple. Apple's iBookstore does not exist to sell our houses. It happened with soda cans, shipping containers, cardboard boxes. It happened with books, it exists to establish iOS as a destination. It's the same with most Facebook our clothes, the zipper and buttons. It happened with your speakers and audio file formats. It hap- features. They are not designed to help the social world. They are designed to estabpened with our cameras, video recorders and batteries. It happened with our food, our milk car- lish Facebook as a destination. There is, however, one glimmer of hope for Facetons and honey jars. In fact, it happened with pretty much every single thing we have ever known. book. We see it with Facebook and Spotify. The way social works between those two Each one started life as an object controlled only by the company who made it, then extended by destinations is almost like social as a protocol. Almost, because while you can see third parties to allow it to work across manufacturers, and finally to becoming a standard or a pro- everything you do on Spotify within Facebook, and even bring your friend connectocol that disconnected the object from the destination. The social shift is just the natural evolu- tions back to Spotify, the actual communication is very one sided. Facebook is still by Thomas Baekdal the only destination. The future of social media The question is then, what is the next tion of how things happen. Not only that, but all the trends are pointing in the same direction. The Google+ is in many ways also a destination, especially with its lack of a two-way API dissatisfaction we see with social media today, is the result of the limitations of the actual destinastep? What is the future of social media? And the answer is painand outside tools. In that regard, Google+ is just as bad as Facebook, in fully. The future is when social becomes a protocol. In a recent consumer satisfaction report by ForeSee, Twitter and Facebook scored well below what you would expect, averaging 62.5 trying to use social to force people to become part of that connection. Many people think that the future of Facebook is out of 100 (that's well below the average of 74.2). In comparison, Google+ scored 78, Google Search scored 82, Bing Scored 81, Yahoo alternatives like Diaspora, or the many Twitter al- scored 78, Wikipedia 78, and the average score for newspapers was 73. More to the point, Facebook represents the largest drop of all Just as all other social channels, you need to be on Google+ to take part in ternatives that are popping up, but no. Diaspora, the digital brands measured. And while this report only measured consumer satisfaction, we see the same trend in business satisfaction. it. With that said, Google+ is actually the closest thing we have to the while much more open and flexible than Facebook, Some people call this social media fatigue, but there is a lot more to it than that. In fact, there is no such thing as social media fatigue. future of social as a protocol. While Google+ itself is a destination like all doesn't change the problem. You still cannot communicate across services. You still We are not tired of social, we are tired of all the things that get in the way of being social. We have the issue of control. We feel like we the others, Google+ as a service is not. For example, it's integrated into cannot tie it into everything, and you still have to ask people to create a separate ac- are just a guest playing around in their garden. We have no control. We can decide what we post, but not how it is posted. We cannot Gmail and Google Calendar and 'Hangout on Air' is integrated into Youcount for each social service. And it's the same with the many Twitter alternatives. We decide how things should look, we cannot even decide who should see it because of EdgeRank. At the same time, we have the constant Tube. The future of social for Google is looking very promising. It's already are not moving forward and, as such, neither of these alternatives have any chances of violations of privacy. One day, we find information we thought we could control is suddenly made a part of something that we didn't really close within its own services. It won't be long until YouTube and making a difference. The future of Facebook is ...nothing. Meaning, the future of social agree to at all - like when our name is used in relation to 3rd party products or brands. We have issues with the design, in which we Google+ become part of the same social protocol. When you upload a don't feel any continuity, not to mention Facebook suddenly changing what email address people see. For brands it's not much better. is not yet another destination. It's a communication protocol, a standard way of con- Brands are being limited in so many ways, that they often wonder why they embrace these social channels at all. It's actually 'illegal' to video to YouTube, it will also automatically become part of your Google+ necting with each other. There is no 'the next Facebook', because Facebook itself is ask fans to vote on two pictures and then reward them with a prize. On top of this, we are faced with design constraints. We're not stream. When you post a comment on Google+, it won't be long until that like the email systems of the past. Let me give you a very simple example of the future allowed to include promotional messages in our cover images. So, if you have a big event on Saturday, we can't visually promote that in comment is made part of YouTube as well - and vice versa. of social media. Take this article. Is it social? No, of course not. It's published on a web- the best possible way. Again, we're are not allowed to be in control. And while I personally like the Facebook timeline design, it's not But it doesn't stop there. Think about Blogger combined with Google+. site, and while I have added sharing buttons to it, that's doesn't really make it social really that useful. Then we have another problem; the newsfeed. Posts without links are presented with diminished emphasis when Soon we will be able to create a blog on Blogger, and then, whenever we because you don't actually share the article, or the communication within it. You only compared to posts that include a photo. Here you get bigger pictures and bigger text than post with links to a web shop, for example. post a new article, it will be posted on Google+ as well. Not the link, but share a link. But what if I copy/pasted this article and instead posted it directly on For developers it's even worse. There is a continual movement to keep people within the confines of each social channel instead of em- the real article. Then, when you comment on Google+, it will be made Google+ or on Facebook, would it then be social? Well, yes...it would. Then it would bracing the connected world. For instance, Twitter is preventing tweets being cross-posted to LinkedIn. They are also preventing 3rd part of the article on Blogger and vice versa. As an individual, you are be just like any other social post, tied into the social fabric of the social channels. But party apps (like Instagram) being able to 'find friends via Twitter', They are increasingly trying to keep people on Twitter instead of be- then free to decide how you want to follow it. You can follow it on the ing a platform from which we can connect. All of this, of course, is nothing when compared to the even bigger problem causing social blog or on Google+. You decide where and how your want to engage with wait-a-minute...that means that today we define social not as what we do, but where media fatigue. The problem of closed platforms. it. Unlike Facebook (and Twitter), Google has the capabilities to expand we do it. If we post an article on a website, we are not social. But if we post it on Facebeyond its social network. They have the tools, the sites, and the services, book, we are. Why can't we define a website as a social channel? Why do we think of to turn social into a protocol. Of course, it would still be limited to social media as a destination? Again, it's just how we used to think about email. Isn't the act of posttions. We don't have social media fatigue. We have social destination fatigue. Google, and still be a destination. But we already use YouTube videos across chaning something that others can connect, follow and communicate with what social is all about? There What happens now? So what does this mean for our current social media channels? Well, first of nels and sites. If that happens with Google+, then we are looking at an early frameshouldn't be a difference between how social you are when posting something on one channel versus all, this social 'shift' from destination to protocol is going to take a while. The current social world work for social as protocol. posting it on another. Social media today is still stuck in the old world of destinations. This is why the is very entrenched in the traditional form of social. So, who's going to feel the pinch first? Nothing comes after Facebook. As I started out saying. The future of Facebook real social revolution has only reached 2% of its real potential. We Twitter is probably the first one to feel the pressure. It's foris...nothing because we have reached the end of social media as a thing, a place and haven't actually started being social yet What will the social mat, limited to 140 characters, means that it cannot be a con- a destination. The future of social media is to be a protocol. There will not be anworld be like in the future? First of all, social media won't be a nection by itself, it can only be the facilitator of a connection. other Facebook. There will not be another Twitter, and there will not even be andestination. This has a number of huge implications. For one, you Twitter's very existence is based upon being something that will no longer have to sign-up for different social channels, just so other Google+. That doesn't mean there isn't a future for social tools, there is! We connects people between destination. And once those destinayou can follow a brand or your friends. You will be able to decide are at 2% of the real social revolution, and the social space is looking very exciting. which tools or services benefit you the most. Today, people and tions are replaced, a big part of Twitter's role evaporates. There is, however, one interesting as- But it's a different type of social. Pinterest is a social destination. Foursquare is a brands don't really have a choice which services they want to use. If all your friends are using Face- pect of Twitter and its social future. Twitter Cards. The idea is that a tweet is not just a tweet anysocial destination, Path is a social destination...and they are all defining social as a book, you have to use Facebook as well. But what if you could follow your Facebook friends from more, now a tweet is accompanied with the actual post itself (or a summary of it). The concept of "Thing" Twitter cards is very interesting, because it illustrates a glimmer of the future of what social will Google+? What if you didn't want to sign-up for Facebook at all, and you happened to prefer another Digital Media Management, Event channel? That's social as a protocol. With email, you don't have to sign-up for an Outlook account, be about. The problem, of course, is that Twitter isn't doing this for the sake of social as a protoplanners, E-Commerce solutions, Web just because several of your friends happen to be using that. But you can still communicate with col. They are doing it to force you to use Twitter as a destination. As such, Twitter is actually movdesigning & development, Search them because email today isn't a destination. It's a protocol. For brands, it's even more profound. ing in the wrong direction. They are trying to discourage you from connecting directly with the Today, brands are forced to publish their content on social channels, and in the process are discon- source, by republishing your content within a tweet. The concept is interesting, but the reasoning engine marketing , Social media necting it from their business. We see this, for instance with the Facebook readers of the Wall Street behind it isn't. Twitter will not go away anytime soon, but without the destinations, their future marketing Journal, the Guardian and many others, including brands like ASOS, who have to operate two web will be a social niche. Great for sharing quick things you want people to see, but not really a part Services Rendered to Our Clients are: shops, one on Facebook and one on their website. When social becomes a protocol, brands can just of the larger social revolution. Sms marketing , social marketing , web marFacebook has even bigger problems because everything it does use whatever platform that fits their business model the most. It would be just as easy to follow a keting, Public Relations, wedding planners, is designed to establish Facebook as the one and only destinabrand on a website, as it is to follow it on Facebook. And I'm not talking about cross-posting or linking Corporate events and Event Management, tion for social media. They are trying to find a way for you to the way we see it today. That's destination thinking. I'm talking about social as a protocol, where the Exhibitions , Press conferences and seminars only use Facebook. As such, their entire business model is content comes to you, on whatever channel you prefer to use. When social becomes a protocol, the for organizations, Road shows attracting based on the opposite of what the social revolution is about. interaction and communication would be linked to the content itself, rather than the platform. You public appearances, Fashion shows for Forcing brands to create specialized brand pages and getting higher prospective growth in career, Media might say, this is never going to happen. But it will. It happened with email, which was first defined as newspapers and web shops to create Facebook apps, these are Consultation, Website design, Logo and a destination, then a destination + connectors, then as a standard protocol. But it doesn't stop here graphic design, Photography all tools to get you to use Facebook as a destination. The features and functionality, and the overIt also happened with TV. In the early days, TV shows had to be made for each specific type of TV, just all social effect, is all very impressive, but it doesn't change the fact that Facebook is trying to prelike social posts have to be made for each social channel. But today, TV broadcasts are a protocol, www.facebook.com/SMEOFFICIAL

Marketing

What Comes After Facebook? The Future of Social Media