Matt Bross, Global CTO, Huawei: ICT Convergence, Response Panel: Dave Clark, Andy Lippman

Challenges: industry is too large – hard to develop a framework for placing investment for future
World Econ Forum: discussion about shift of power (public-private, West-East)
Power is shifting to people, per A. Lippman – cyberfication of our lives
We’re at ‘Middle Earth’: some companies have organized power of people. But is power in networks/ system/ algorithms or in what people bring to the equation?
Telecom historically is focused on physical address, not people. Not about experience or enhancing people’s lives.
Poses question: converged messaging. Focus is on P&L, not person. Mobile is becoming functional fixed line due to proximity to person.
‘sphere of innovation possibilities’. Radii are areas of potential innovation/ technologies. Can understand rate of increase at 10x (or whatever). But exponential increase in other opportunities.
Eg, Mobile/ cloud/ content/ sensor networks as foundational technologies that cause huge shifts above for investment decisions. And they all interact. No crystal ball. (to drive sustainable long term differentiate-able shareholder value)

Panel

Andy Lippman: end of texting. Threshold events/ paradigm shifts: reading on screen (Kindle, e-books), Twitter, ability to put background app on mobile device was death knell for texting

DDC: Bross sees problem as how to invest. DDC says how do you carve up the volume of that industry space. It’s about interfaces – open interfaces. Much of the technical work is business work in disguise b/c tech decisions affect industry structure. (Ref back to Internet design/ protocols and industry structure.) Now how do we design that industry space, design that industry structure? Not like when Internet was being designed. Too many players with stakes. And how to do it to benefit the world as a whole? Big companies should try to make pie bigger for everyone and try to get a slice. Small companies can’t shift the world (usually, except for a few like FB).

C. Fine: disputes idea that power is shifting to the people. Eg, Occupy Wall Street. Has cyberfication increased inequality in the world? Fewer people can capture larger share of the wealth now. World isn’t flat, it’s spiky. Is this a result of the communications infrastructure we created? And can we turn that around?

Negroponte: Is there an inconsistency between wanting to increase shareholder value and people having multiple devices?
Bross: yes. They were wrong. Increasing # of devices isn’t a way to increase shareholder value even though someone once thought so. Sustainability and social responsibility aren’t in contradiction. Creation of natural barriers to exist not in conflict with sustainable shareholder value (rather than unnatural barriers to exit). Not looking at indiv.
To Charlie: orgs have consolidated power but P2P comms show some power to people. Power is shifting to people – Middle Earth -- power to organize now possible. Not always working to people’s advantage but will more in the future.

DDC: Two trends that IT made possible: empowering the people has happened but IT empowers bureaucracy. Govts grow until they can’t manage information, and now we’ve empowered them to grow without bound. Now tension between IT as tool to empower people or take it away from people. Eg, Arab Spring. We’ve destabilized it by reducing latency. We’re entering phase 2 of middle earth.

??, Cisco: point of so many msg systems is driven partly by human nature need to be different and compete – differentiation and growth of company. Hence some (tech?) converge and some differentiate – drives fragmentation – that’s how industry makes money. Eg, do not need L2 and L3. Could there have been only one? Probably yes.

Roberto, Telecom Italia: in telecom, not about people. not clear if number connects to person. Don’t know how to shift from connectivity of termination point to connectivity of people. privacy, etc – issues.

Bross: cyberfication of lives: transport, healthcare, pharma, etc. we are, per DDC, reslicing the same pie. Want to bring the next B ppl into global econ. becomes sustainable exit to global liquidity crisis – make the mkt larger. Great opp now to do it fast. We have enough innovations to make it happen if put to work correctly.

Lippman: likes the idea of designing an industry we weren’t meant to be a player. There’s a tech reason for this – tech can save us? Believes mobile devices will plateau – we can’t power it anymore (battery issue). In 2-3 yrs, increased convergence of power (computing) of mobile devices – gap between avg and best will shrink. That’s part of how next B ppl will come in. tech democratization.

DDC: will next B ppl achieve equal access to the cloud since computing power gets offloaded/ shifted?

Lippman: if that’s the challenge, how to build a cloud that guarantees everyone has that access?

Negroponte: next (and next and next) B ppl will happen too fast. Don’t use phrase “next billion”.

Bross: next B is achievable/ addressable in record shortest time. The ones that follow, appropriate to try to address

Essie __, Nokia/ Siemens: not only didn’t think about monetizing internet for self, didn’t think about monetizing for others. Significance is that it introduced the free business model. didn’t know what was valuable until we figured out it was our own data, maybe more so than, eg, Google’s algorithm. Made it possible for FB, Google, etc to exist.

DDC: We (Internet designers) were early exploiters of concept of ‘free.’ Protocols and implementation were free (due to DOD requirement). B/c we were academics it was OK to generate business opps for others; as a business it’s difficult to generate something that creates social good that makes you the business smaller.

Chintan: question about the ‘next billion’. How does that address the current crisis? They weren’t the ones who got us into it. Is this a short term solution that leads to the same mess again later? If by joining the fold, are they solving the problem or are we solving it?

C. Fine: two diff bottom groups: bottom of the world (4-5B ppl), and bottom of the first world, whose futures look smaller going forward – compared to what they thought they’d have. Latter is facing loss in expected (wealth). Globalization speeds rate of loss – different labor markets. Internet pushes that along. Bringing in last 4-5B exacerbates it. Bottom of world gets richer, bottom 99% of First World gets poorer, don’t know how Internet affects that
Lippman: challenge for CFP: how many of us believe it’s about growing the pie? Life, liberty and happiness in the cloud?