New Workforce - The Weblog of New Equities

Coming in 2007: the VR internet

In his now-classic 1981 short story True Names, author Vernor Vinge imagined a worlldwide virtual reality network in which users could assume alter egos and manipulate data with techniques similar to wizardry and magic. Many computer users, particularly gamers, embraced those concepts wholeheartedly, as attested to by the success of Second Life and other online environments (including World of Warcraft and similar MMORPGs). Now a non-profit group is building a new type of internet specifically for VR games and applications:

Neuronet, which is separate from the Internet, "will evolve into the world's first public network capable of meeting the data transmission requirements of emerging cinematic and immersive virtual-reality technologies," according to a Wednesday announcement from the Vancouver-based International Association of Virtual Reality Technologies.

The first-generation Neuronet is scheduled to go live in 2007, the group said. Consumer applications are expected as early as 2009.

Virtual reality generally refers to environments with visual and audio information that makes a person feel immersed in a computer-generated realm. The growth of environments such as Second Life has spotlighted such efforts, and IBM believes that virtual worlds will open new doors to e-commerce as well.

The group promises that Neuronet will have high-speed communication, a key constraint for virtual reality, which requires transmission of large quantities of graphics and other data, as well as fast responses to give users a better illusion of realism.

Although the full impact is still years off, it's not much of a stretch to imagine the impact of such a VR network on project management and collaboration among remote team members. Online meetings and webinars, once a novelty, are now a staple in the business world. In 10 years, will it be commonplace for project teams to collaborate in simulated meeting rooms, solving problems by manipulating shared data models in 3D? IBM's endorsement of Second Life, and now Neuronet, is an indication that it may be.

Humanity 2.0

Technology futurist and author Ray Kurzweil offers a thought-provoking vision of the not-so-distant-future:

Kurzweil told a keynote audience at last week's SCO6 supercomputing conference that nanobots will roam our blood streams fixing diseased or aging organs, while computers will back up our human memories and rejuvenate our bodies by keeping us young in appearance and health.

The author of the book The Singularity Is Near, Kurzweil says within a quarter of a century, non-biological intelligence will match the range and subtlety of human intelligence. He predicts that it will then soar past human ability because of the continuing acceleration of information-based technologies, as well as the ability of machines to instantly share their knowledge.

In an interview with InformationWeek, Kurzweil said people and computers will intermix with nanobots, blood cell-sized robots, that will be integrated into everything from our clothing to our bodies and brains. People simply need to live long enough—another 15 to 30 years—to live forever. Think of it as replacing everyone's "human body version 1.0" with nanotechnology that will repair or replace ailing or aging tissue, he says. Parts will become easily replaceable.

"A $1,000 worth of computation in the 2020s will be 1,000 times more powerful than the human brain," says Kurzweil, adding that in 25 years we'll have multiplied our computational power by a billion. "Fifteen years from now, it'll be a very different world. We'll have cured cancer and heart disease, or at least rendered them to manageable chronic conditions that aren't life threatening. We'll get to the point where we can stop the aging process and stave off death."

Kurzweil even goes out on a limb and predicts that nanotechnology will  yield a cure for the common cold.

Summer reading that's good for your career

Put down that Stephen King novel! With August at hand, what have you read lately to enhance your career prospects? Here is a list of "Eight Summer Reads for the Career Conscious", courtesy of CareerBuilder editor Kate Lorenz.

(Hat tip: Tom Van Steenberg)

Wally McClure presents Ajax

On Tuesday, July 25th, New Equities is sponsoring an event for .NET developers through the Charlotte chapter of the Enterprise Developers Guild: "Wally McClure presents Ajax". Here's the event info:

Date:	7/25/2006
Time:	6:00 PM
Location:	Microsoft Campus

Join us Tuesday, July 25, at 6 PM on the Microsoft campus for an evening with Wally McClure -- MVP, author, and Tennessee neighbor. Wally is working on a new book and is eager to show us how Ajax has progressed for .NET web developers. In case you've been vacationing on the South Pole without an internet connection, Ajax is the technique of getting information exchanged between the client and the server without a post-back and the usual page flash and redraw.

Wallace B. McClure graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1990 with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering. He continued his education there, receiving a Master’s degree in the same field in late 1991. Since that time, McClure has done consulting and development for such companies as Coca-Cola, Bechtel National, Magnatron, and Lucent Technologies, among others. He is the founder and president of McClure Development. You can find Wally’s blog at weblogs.asp.net/wallym.

We have also added Wally's blog from our Tech Links blogroll in the right column.

Directions to the Microsoft Campus can be found here, as well as on the Enterprise Developers Guild website.

Greasing the skids of the knowledge economy

On my desk: Gurus, Hired Guns and Warm Bodies, a 2004 study by Stephen R. Barley and Gideon Kunda that profiles "itinerant experts in a knowledege economy", that is, technology contractors. The book also goes into quite a bit of detail on the clients who hire contingent workers and the staffing organizations who often broker relationships. From the liner notes:

Viewing the knowledge economy in terms of organizations and markets is not enough, Barley and Kunda conclude. Rather, occupational communities and networks of skilled experts are what grease the skids of the high-tech, "matrix economy" where firms become way stations in the flow of expertise.

It promises to be an interesting read. Once I've had time to digest it, I'll post a review.

It's a flat world after all

Actually, not quite yet but getting there, according to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge has a review of Friedman's new book, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century.

Friedman, an influential columnist for The New York Times and respected authority on Middle East politics and society, traveled widely to research The World is Flat. Much of what he shares about business trends will not surprise sophisticated managers, but the telling itself is often enjoyable. He conveys the same degree of respect and admiration to call center employees in Bangalore and a working housewife in Utah as he does to the numerous CEOs and big-wigs he lunches and dines with. (His interviews include Bill Gates, Colin Powell, and heads of major companies in India and China.)

His message: Wake up, America, and stop resting on your laurels. “In China today, Bill Gates is Britney Spears,” Friedman writes. “In America today, Britney Spears is Britney Spears—and that is our problem.”

Elsewhere, they publish reader responses to ideas provoked by Friedman's book, embodied in the question, "Is a level playing field a good thing?"

UPDATE: Wired has an extensive interview with Thomas Friedman by workforce guru Daniel Pink.

Working the right side of the brain

Daniel Pink's article, "Revenge of the Right Brain" originally published in the Feb issue of Wired, is now available online and provides a good introduction to the premise of his new book, A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age.

As the forces of Asia, automation, and abundance strengthen and accelerate, the curtain is rising on a new era, the Conceptual Age. If the Industrial Age was built on people's backs, and the Information Age on people's left hemispheres, the Conceptual Age is being built on people's right hemispheres. We've progressed from a society of farmers to a society of factory workers to a society of knowledge workers. And now we're progressing yet again - to a society of creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers.

But let me be clear: The future is not some Manichaean landscape in which individuals are either left-brained and extinct or right-brained and ecstatic - a land in which millionaire yoga instructors drive BMWs and programmers scrub counters at Chick-fil-A. Logical, linear, analytic thinking remains indispensable. But it's no longer enough.

To flourish in this age, we'll need to supplement our well-developed high tech abilities with aptitudes that are "high concept" and "high touch." High concept involves the ability to create artistic and emotional beauty, to detect patterns and opportunities, to craft a satisfying narrative, and to come up with inventions the world didn't know it was missing. High touch involves the capacity to empathize, to understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one's self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian in pursuit of purpose and meaning.

Pink's previous book,  Free Agent Nation, in which he documented the rise of the independent worker as the cornerstone of the 21st century economy, is still very relevant nearly half a decade after its original publication. His new book (which I'm currently reading) looks to be at least as insightful.

(Via Instapundit)