I’ve been traveling a lot in the last 3 months: China, Pacific Islands, Singapore, USA and the Caribbean. It’s been an interesting time to just observe and not spend too much time thinking and writing. It’s been an amazing decade, the noughties, a time of profound shifts and shocks.

The nineties seemed so easy in comparison…yes some financial disasters but they are part of the regular boom/busy cycle..but in general times were good and there was an air of stability. Y2K came and went and in all the excitement we had ourselves caught up in a huge stock market bubble…..the tech wreck….horribly followed by 9/11 and the start of a new era in US expansionary policy.

The last decade saw the financial system gutted from the inside out. That it is still standing is a testimony the the magic that one can weave with numbers. The spread of social media and the growth of the internet was nothing if astonishing. The ability to communicate 24/7 took many by surprise and for some completely took over their lives. The rise of Apple….and the iPod generation transformed music, computing and basically created a whole new industry in itself…mind you was it much different to the Walkman and its introduction? Yes Google, Apple, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter brought the world of media, in all its forms, to a completely new level. But that’s what technology does…we’re just moving at an exponential rate.

China and the rest of the BRIC gang really came to the party. The US ended the decade on its knees…wrapped up in wars it cannot win, with a financial system in disarray and an economy on its knees. With Japan the first industrialized economy to fail and the US not far behind, the global shape of international relations has changed. Multi-polarity is an uncomfortable idea for many and how that works out will be a real test.

On that subject climate change continues to take center stage notwithstanding the inevitable failure of the Copenhagen talks. The records all show the noughties being the warmest on record but the small matter of fiddling numbers won’t have helped bolster the case of extreme action. When arguments hinge on tiny fractions any question on their veracity can have serious consequences. As a researcher in this area for sometime i must admit even i have become somewhat sanguine over the whole thing.

When I look back over the last decade and forward to the next, it seems as if the same themes will recur:

- Financialisation of Economies: Can we remove the yoke of derivative financial instruments from the real economy?

- Technology: Will social media enable the development of a networked based economy?

- Global Politics: Can we move to a multi-polar world without the necessity of the United Nations as a de facto world government?

- Climate change: How do we manage the change in our climate and the resulting shifts in population and its attendant baggage?

There’s plenty of hope in those questions for moving to a more sustainable world. But any one of those we get wrong could easily send us into a period of darkness. Let’s hope we don’t end up taking this road.

I will explore each topic in more detail over the next few weeks.

This is a no brainer.

Intel donating 25cts for every time you click on this page.

There are links to Global Giving, Save the Children and of course Kiva!

Giving as a way of life, monetarily or time wise, is a growing movement. Technology and social media is helping this really transform the process of philanthropy. It’s creating social innovation and driving potential long terms changes in how society can work.

Perhaps even sending a signal to the tax and welfare system. Maybe we don’t need big government. Maybe something new will come from all of this.

So the Tamil Tigers are no more and yet another ethnic conflict comes to a miserable end. How many killed for this? Has it made any difference? It may take some time for that question to be answered. Like many ethnic conflicts, this one seems to have gone on for a long time making one wonder what exactly it was all about.

My parents actually lived in Sri Lanka for a short time just before the civil war broke out. I spent the Xmas holidays on 1980/1 visiting them and enjoying the gorgeous beaches of the south west and the green hinterland. When I heard that civil war had broken out it didn’t really resonate with me. As a 14 year old, the Sinhalese and Tamils I had met just seemed like people. Also growing up with the conflict in Northern Ireland never far from the news, it seemed par for the course.

People, even of the same colour and country, could still engage in war. Both sides of my family have been on the wrong end of the ethnic vacuum cleaner so maybe I was just inured to it.But these days I am very tuned into any mention of ethincity and references to improving the hygiene of ones home country.

Whilst pondering the end of the latest carnage I was floored by the story of a Catholic man who was beaten to death by a group of Rangers football supporters in a small town in Northern Ireland. It was after Rangers had triumphed by winning the Scottish soccer leage competiton that a bunch of Rangers fans, Protestants, decided to pay a visit to the Catholic part of town and basically murder someone. Which they did.

So it continues. It’s a bit 20th century though.

Nowhere is immune from this.

What about that gorgeous Kingdom of Happiness, Bhutan. Apparently a wonderful place to visit and a very progressive society. In fact about 5 years ago I included Bhutan in a paper on E-government. It was quite advanced for a small mountainous country. No mention in the Wikipedia entry of ethnic cleansing.

Yet in the last 15 Years nearly 15-20% of the population has been cleansed and evicted from the country. What the..???

They certainly kept that quiet. 120,000 Bhutanese have been transformed into refugees living in 7 camps in Nepal. Some have found their way here to Christchurch to start a new life.

It feels like an ongoing epidemic……it’s hard to know when it will stop. Our identity is so important to us, yet at the same time it allows the tyranny of the majority an easy way to express any kind of anger or frustration. As Amartya Sen writes in “Identity and Violence“,

“..a major source of potential conflict in the contemporary world is the presumption that people can be uniquely categorized based on religion or culture”.

Indeed but it’s our willingness to succumb to group behaviour and peer pressure that allows atrocities like ethnic cleansing and genocide to happy. How can we move away from the “clash of civilizations” and to an appreciation of the person?

Actually I don’t know if we can. It seems so ingrained in our nature. Of course we can all educate our children and imbue them with values that include compassion, kindness and care.

I wonder how technology will help? I have a feeling that will play a bigger part than we realise. Maybe when all the teenagers around the world are connected through the semantic web……who knows?

Ok i don’t often talk about my own business here but time to throw a story out for comment.

As some of you know I am a director of VortexDNA, a technology company based here in Christchurch. Now a while ago we were told we could get a grant from New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, which is our economic development agency for developer resources. Great we thought because we were short handed in that department and had plenty of work available.

We applied and were fortunate enough to receive $20,000 for a developer. I’ll state now that I am not a fan of government grants at all but if it’s available then I guess you have to take it.

The developer did some work for us and was very good. We decided to reward him with some stock in the company as we do with pretty much anyone who does anything worthwhile for us. It’s a measure of our gratitude and a desire to make people part of what they help create. Sounds good?

Well no not according to NZTE who have told us we were in breach of some clause in the agreement which states there can be no financial arrangement between the company and the developer. Stone the crows!

The audit people from NZTE have played firm with the rules and told us we have to repay the money and to add insult to injury we have been placed on a high risk register for any future application.

Needless to say the directors are fuming.

And I am even more convinced that government should stay well out of business.

Meanwhile we continue to expand into the US, UK and even Russia.

Under our own steam no doubt!

For those who haven’t read it yet here is link to the complete report on the future of search. It’s an eye opening read and hopefully will give rise to new ideas, new research and even new businesses.

For me it is the democratic nature of the web that excites me. For now i’ve just focused on the delivery of the architecture that will make us form the web around us rather than having to shop through designated ports.

I think that is well on the way to happening.

I’m also thinking about the impact on governance. By this i mean the way we allow ourselves to be governed: our electoral processes, our engagement and involvement in political systems and how we make ourselves heard.

The coming versions of the web will not just make business more efficient, or general life but our political systems, our governments who eat up 30-50% of our GDP depending where you live.

The ultimate political feedback and citizen engagement system is going to rise up from the web. The powers that be are not likely to embrace this as many of them will be out of a job.

E-government is a web 1.0 framework. Imagine what it could look like in future versions. Maybe we can set up a  dream team for that?

Thanks to Kaila i’ve been considering the future of search in 2010 or more to the point the future of search itself.

It didn’t take me long to realise that search is going to replaced by receive. How annoying is that to all those businesses involved in SEO

But seriously if we are still searching in 2010 i will be surprised because by then the web should be evolving into a living and breathing system. This system will not be a library which we dip into hoping that we will find what we are looking for but will be part of us.

Simply put we will become the system.

We won’t need to search anymore as we will be the filter through which information, that we both want and may be interested in, will flow.

Search is an external process: Receive is an internal process.

Relevance technologies will be key to this evolution as will as filtering systems. Receive will be an intelligent learning system. I’m looking forward to this.

Which is the best receive engine?…..that will be the question.