Back to the revolution, back to the blog!

Last post is now over 6 months old. While we waited to see what happened with technologies this year the revolution has spread. Change of regimes, riots, a new war and many efforts to save the world economy in certain parts of our globe have been at the forefront of news.

The revolution has also seen the emergence of social networking so that now Facebook has a value in the market, Apple is now a big legacy to be continued and the alliance between Microsoft and Nokia has given birth to new technology products. Tablets and electronic book readers are now used much more.

And cloud computing is on the up. Yesterday I was at Kingston University in an event about this subject. It is interesting to see how companies like Microsoft have invested in the cloud. Their Azure platform is delivering interesting solutions. One of them is for the Body Shop, which is now a global business. My friend Farid and I coincided in thinking that still the cloud is rather a black box than a cloud. It just delivers what it is asked to do, not many questions being asked, not many pages in a contract to be read or signed.

Still, how these technologies are providing specific benefits so we can say they improve our quality of life and that of our organisations or societies needs attention. Those interested in research say that there is a new ecosystem (see a previous post in this blog) to which we can attach ourselves. End users see that they can get information in real time, presented in a nice way (maps, routes, bookings, news, etc), at their fingertips. Technology developers can now focus on particular parts of information products and services: (Mobile) Applications, middleware, databases or communication networks.

And governments are now more sophisticated in their use of technologies. Mobile applications for citizens are becoming a norm, as digital documents or signatures.

Maybe the revolution within this revolution is not to lose sight of what we can do with all these possibilities, and also to keep the good of what we had. I am still using the same mobile phone, netbook and laptop, am still reading printed copies of papers and books. They do the job for me.

I still think that we need to sort out other problems whilst we use the opportunities brought by technology. The big problem is still how to benefit more people from the changes we experience. It is about not being forgotten but being active in shaping such changes. Many of us would not like to be targeted as consumers but as human beings.