I'm a nerd. I was surfing around getting different opinions on Google Voice and ATT's new claim against the service, and ran across Google's public policy blog which i am diggin (but not on Digg). Apparently Eric Schmidy spoke at the G-20 conference, which in itself is a huge deal; but he spoke to the Pittsburgh Technology council proior to his G20 engagement and outlined some of the implications of technology to humans and out culture.
"Technology" can be thought of as anything "new" of human invention, the pencil, the printing press, the car, the inclined plane, the gear can all instances of cutting edge technology in their time.
As the google blog summarizes:
* History has shown us that cutting-edge technology and the free, open flow of information are key drivers of economic growth. Call it "Gutenberg's Law": there's a clear correlation between the amount of information available to the average citizen and the economic growth and progress of that citizen's country. From the printing press to the telegraph to the Internet, each has enabled more exchange of ideas and sharing of information, resulting in a corresponding boost to economic progress.
* Today, we are only at the very cusp of the technological revolution that the rise of the Internet will bring. Technology is changing almost everything about how we live, work, and play. Networks are getting ever-faster, data is being generated at an exponential rate, and devices are becoming faster and more powerful, able to store and do more even as they shrink. That means changes in the way we connect and communicate; changes in how we generate, find, and use information; and changes in how we interact with business and government.
* Technology has driven down barriers to entry in terms of knowledge, scale, cost, and geography, leading to increased competition on a global scale. Today's entrepreneurs can leverage the Internet and technology in a way that only the largest multinational could afford 10 or 15 years ago. Size is no barrier to competition. This trend isn't unique to the West -- it's visible all around the world, especially when it comes to clever business applications for mobile.
Gutenbergs Law, thats a good one. Aconcept that in my life i strive to encompass and take advantage of. I am a big believer in utilizing new technology to accomplish what previously took considerably more resources, knowledge and talent than one person or group of people could entail. And as we go along this concentration of skills inside of technology only grows more powerful.
How many people have a digital SLR, they take incredible picture and never take their camera off program mode. truly progress. purists of course are fuming at the face that it takes less specialized knowledge to perform these and other tasks, that photography is now poisoned by people who have little interest in the technical merits of the physics of lens distortion, moire, chemical development, the properties of film etc. I, could care less, how many people know how pencils are made, yet those people produce awesome drawings, works of poetry and prose and find other ingenious uses for those pencils regardless of the procedure used in manufacturing them.
Technology as we know and define it in the 21st century put a seamstress in Accra on the same web results as amazon.com and polo ralph lauren. Capitalism is notlonger about CAPITAL as a mountain of money it is now all about using technology to find your audience, connecting with that audience and having them (monetarily) appreciate the things you do for them whether that be information, products or a service which is provided.
Here is the video, which i have not yet watched, but will be watching later tonight