Forbes Article – How Mobile is rapidly evolving the world
The recent Forbes article “How mobile is rapidly evolving the world” is the inspiration for today’s chat topic. I am also grateful to Autom @autom8 for several of the links below. The various articles referenced here are shaping a fascinating story. It’s a story of a technology that is present in 87% of the world, something no other technology can claim.
This technology is shaping the way farmers in India get their goods to market, and there are global implications for e-learning. One of the articles suggests that mobile technology will replace the web as we know it.
One study reports that 66% of US businesses are investing in some kind of mobile technology for their employees. Despite the staggering penetration numbers some feel we are only at the beginning of a mobile evolution. Change is hard. Many organizations are simply trying to adapt mobile technologies to existing business models.
The Forbes author asks some very challenging evolution questions.
Questions like:
Why didn’t Kodak invent Instagram?
Why didn’t Rand McNally invent Waze?
Can businesses adapt?
Let’s talk about mobile evolution.
Here are the questions for our chat:
Q1) Are we only at the beginning of mobile evolution?
Q2)Could mobile reshape the way we do our work, educate?
Q3) Do you think businesses will be able to adapt to evolving mobile technologies ?
Q4)Could mobile replace the web? How?
Q5) What are global mobile tech evolution implications? social, cultural, education,business?
Q6) If you were advising a biz owner or exec regarding mobile what would you recommend they do?
Photo credit: License
Some rights reserved by sean dreilinger
Other Links:
Global Development could shape e-learning
If Facebook dies, and it might, it’s replacement might be born out of mobile
autom
June 5, 2012
Joe – nicely threaded. Surely, it is no coincidence that some form of global convergence is happening around mobile. It is even more evident in developing nations, where the long-standing lacuna (like that word @ajmunn? haha) of robust telecommunications infrastructures (ie., big pipes, cables, land lines etc) has given way to a booming mobile industry (I know this first-hand when I visited the Philippines 3 years ago). Look forward to tomorrow’s chat Cheers A
josephruizjr
June 5, 2012
Thanks for the comments and the links looking forward to the exchange.
ajmunn
June 6, 2012
So interesting. It is one of those topics where evolution has to take place. Where is the beginning in this situation? Mobile adoption happens best when it satisfies or offers facilitation of real needs. This implies the presence of existing solutions and vision. Replication does not work as we are often unable to map the point where adoption meets actual facilitation. This changes not only between different cultures and audiences across a single offering, the value proposition between different offerings changes drastically.
One thing is for sure, by and large, humans are like water, we will search for the easiest route to achieving our objectives. We want to be able to act on our impulses and we will choose to act using the most convenient tools at our disposal at the point of impulse. Mobile, as a facilitator certainly provides us with opportunities to do just that. However it may just as well be us standing in a brick and mortar store, pointing at a TV screen, or clicking on a desktop.
This is all looking at it through the lens of a well connected developed community with cheap access to data and fully connected city infrastructures. The developing world teaches us things we cannot always hope to be exposed to. When resources are acutely finite, when connectivity is expensive and often sporadic, we learn to build with purpose, against objectives. We figure out how to use technology mashups, and we learn that connecting ideas and purpose is life changing.
josephruizjr
June 6, 2012
Alasdair, really powerful points, especially the observation connecting scarce resources as a driver to building with purpose. That is a keeper.