From the title alone, one would have expected the recent Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco to have dealt primarily with the "usual": advertising, user-generated content, social media, and consumer trends. But this conference was a lot less about where the web meets marketing, and instead focused on where web meets world.
The final speaker of the night on Friday, Al Gore, summed it up nicely when he compared the history of the web to the history of electricity. When electricity was first tapped, there was a lot of focus on whizzbang gadgets, and now electricity flows everywhere, empowering our daily lives. It's time to look at redesigning our systems to be powered by the web. It's time to look at redesigning "the context in which these online activities take place -- in other words, World 2.0." (Gore)
For some industries presenting at the Web 2.0 Summit, the change is already occurring: politics, health, defense, green energy, and disaster aid. But there were others pleading with the audience, hoping to get the ears of venture capitalists and developers, in need of a 2.0 revolution. Those pleas namely came from Michael Pollan for a Food 2.0 movement, and Al Gore who wanted to see cloud computing and collective intelligence be put to work against the climate crisis.
THE PRESENT
For Health 2.0, there are companies like 23andme.com that are putting valuable genetic information in the hands of consumers, enabling more transparent communication between the patient and the doctor. The health panel felt that open data could solve one of health care's biggest problems, getting patients through the door. Basic tools could use genetic data and personal devices to help with preventative continued care, giving updates on your health to your doctor.
For Defense 2.0, we were presented with an interesting question. How smart is it for our defense system to become dependent on this technology? Collaboration technology like the Command Post of the Future and the Warfighter's forum are currently being used by the US army. They enable shared tactical maneuvers, instantaneous communication across countries, and consistency in information viewing. And at the same time, for the huge tech advancement, it also produces new vulnerability to spam and cyber-warfare.
For Green Energy 2.0, there were two interesting start-ups that made it into the presentations. One was Wattzon, a site that helps you measure all the energy use in your life by converting everything into watts. The site uses crowd wisdom to develop more accuracy and helps you understand the size solar panel or oil barrel you'd need to power your life. Another start-up was Sungevity that uses a combination of Google Maps and sun measurement to give accurate and fast solar-power savings estimates to consumers.
THE FUTURE
Michael Pollan, author of the Omnivore's Dilemma, made a great case for Food 2.0, and the need for a Farmer-In-Chief, the subject made famous by a letter he wrote for the NY Times. How do we use social technology to better inform eaters? Pollan called for more food system transparency, knowing where your food comes from while you are in the store, just like a nutrition label. Another idea was to create online communities that would help bring local communities together around food.
In a world constantly looking for the "next thing", maybe we shouldn't be talking about Web 3.0. Maybe 2009 will be the year of World 2.0, or as this interesting post put it recently, Web H2.0:
"Web 2.0, contrary to the thought of a few, is not dead. Hope-driven web 2.0 ("Web H2.0" for short, and pronounced "web H-two-oh) has gained a lot of recognition lately. And that's the next wave of web 2.0 products we'll see. A shift towards hope."
Marta Strickland
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Strategists & Planners
Comments (1)
Marta,
Great post! I wonder where all the 2.0s intersect. Surely, food 2.0 + green energy 2.0 = health 2.0??? I guess what I am trying to say, is that they all have something in common..... a striving for something different and a striving for connection to those things that truly nourish us....
Kirsti
Posted on November 30, 2008 20:09