Alex Toulemonde's blog » Technology

A Story From The Future: “Internet Is In The Air”

admin — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 09:05:02 +0000

The shift that is happening is pretty crazy. Mobile & Tablets are blowing away the PC. But wait. The impact is bigger than we think, my friend Marty just came back from the future with a story:

“In China, I walking in a restaurant that I saw that 34″ screen showing not only my face but also of my best friends favourite meals that I’m more likely to enjoy. Then I started to realize that the menu was in mandarin so I asked to the waiter if I could have an english menu. Guess what?? She laughed at me. ‘Why don’t you get your phone to translate it? You Americans!’”

The cloud X building, face & voice recognition X translation on the fly X the social graph X miniaturization of the connected devices = Probably something you can’t even imagine!!

That’s it, now Internet is in the air. It is no longer true that internet is associated with a device. At least it won’t be in the future.

–break–
In fact, it’s a pretty good news. It means that one way to innovate is to look around you and see if every moves, motions, interactions, facts or even relationships are stored somewhere. If not, there’s an opportunity to add value using technology to transform this data into something helpful.

The pace of innovation on the internet has never been faster, the cost of setting up outstanding web technology is so ridiculously low that thousands of start-ups are building the new tomorrow.

So what? Well, I don’t know… But I’m pretty skeptical.. Everything sounds great huh? Not really. Small businesses were just started to take off on the “new-affordable” web but now there’s no way they can afford a mobile App. At least until decent Mobile CMS start to show up. But if the web keep moving that fast, I’m scared that a new era will take place, increase the cost of ”being technologically remarkable”, and blow away bootstrapping start-ups. What do you think?

10 years ago, it costs 10.000$ to build a decent website, today it’s a cool mobile App, and tomorrow?

Have a look to how good we were 10 years after the TV went out, pretty shitty isn’t it?
How old is internet again?

How The Technology Can/Should Change Our Education?

admin — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 07:40:30 +0000

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Do you Wonder if our education still make sense? Is the most efficient way to learn? How the information access speed is changing it? Like Seton Hill which is giving a Macbook+iPad to every student.

Have a look to Khan Academy? 1000+ provided by one man with one slogan: “The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization with the mission of providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere.”

Here’s a quote of Seth Godin from his article “What Is School For?”

So, a starter list. The purpose of school is to:

Become an informed citizen
Be able to read for pleasure
Be trained in the rudimentary skills necessary for employment
Do well on standardized tests
Homogenize society, at least a bit
Pasteurize out the dangerous ideas
Give kids something to do while parents work
Teach future citizens how to conform
Teach future consumers how to desire
Build a social fabric
Create leaders who help us compete on a world stage
Generate future scientists who will advance medicine and technology
Learn for the sake of learning
Help people become interesting and productive
Defang the proletariat
Establish a floor below which a typical person is unlikely to fall
Find and celebrate prodigies, geniuses and the gifted
Make sure kids learn to exercise, eat right and avoid common health problems
Teach future citizens to obey authority
Teach future employees to do the same
Increase appreciation for art and culture
Teach creativity and problem solving
Minimize public spelling mistakes
Increase emotional intelligence
Decrease crime by teaching civics and ethics
Increase understanding of a life well lived
Make sure the sports teams have enough players

If you have the email address of the school board or principals, perhaps you’ll forward this list to them (and I hope you are in communication with them regardless, since it’s a big chunk of your future and your taxes!). Should make an interesting starting point for a discussion.

Seth Godin, from his blog.

My conclusion is that considering how easy and fast it is to access to the information, we should focus more on the interaction part of our courses and increase our curiosity. If there’s no interaction or no debate then we can watch an expert give the course online.

“We lead a company by asking questions, not giving answers” – Jim Collins in Tribal Leadership

Also watch Ken Robinson on “how school can kill creativity”.

PS: Don’t get me wrong, I like my education based on entrepreneurship but we can always aim at better right?

How the technology is affecting the way we network

admin — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 08:17:06 +0000

I animated a workshop (in french) at my school to give my point of view about this topic and see what ideas we can learn from my classmates.

Here’s the presentation, the video is pretty shitty but I might upload it. Follow me on Twitter to stay in touch.

How the Technology is Affecting The Way We Network

All the new technologies are changing the way we think, what we expect from life and so how we share.

Through the sharing, technology is bringing back the truth and gives value to people who share the most and who care each other.

Here’s 20 rules which can help you to grow your network.

The last slides are about the importance of innovation. Believe in it is the main source of motivation.

Now you can start sharing with LinkedIn (US) or Viadeo (Europe). My main sources are from the 6 books for Entrepreneurs. Feel free to react.

A related video in french: