How will Rock Band and Guitar Hero influence music?

With thousands if not hundreds of thousands of young teens addicted to the video games: Rock Band and Guitar Hero, I’m curios to see how this will influence the music scene in the next 5 -10 years.

Web 3.0 and Web 4.0

There are many suggestions as to what Web 3.0 will be. Here is one from Google’s Eric Schmidt that describes it in terms of applications structured based on simple Web services in The Cloud:

Sure.. I’ll accept that. But what about Web 4.0? Here are my thoughts…

Web 1.0 helped connect people to information.

Web 2.0 helped connect people to other people through social networks.

Web 3.0 will help connect Web services in The Cloud to form meaningful situational applications

Web 4.0 will help further connect the physical world to the internet

The Web is often compared to the human brain in its workings. Google, the search engine of the web, was designed around cognitive scientific theory, with its creators fluent in artificial intelligence. If the internet is the world’s brain, then in order to create a Smarter Planet, we need to connect the brain to the physical world. I always thought IBM was behind when it came to Web 2.0… in reality they are simply looking ahead with Web 3.0 (SOA) and now Web 4.0 (Smarter Planet).

To accomplish this sensory devices will be required that can translate physical qualities into data, and log the data chronologically through feeds. This is nothing new. Weather stations provided this type of data for many years now. But we’ll see it more and more in our daily physical lives, here for an example is a plant tweeting its soils moisture condition:

http://twitter.com/startrkplant

…and the data will become more readily available, immediately, through the internet, The Cloud, in the form of feeds, and processed and abstracted intelligently through layers of Web services or pipes:

Yahoo! Pipes

… the same way our brain processes, translates, and abstracts our own sensory data retrieved from our eyes, nose, hands, tongue, ears, etc.

I may expand on this thought more in future posts… till then it will be stuck in my head.

The Generation Gap Theory

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme” – Mark Twain

Famous words by Mark Twain emphasize my recent observations…

In my previous post called re-80’s, I talked about the cycles of music. I think this cyclic nature is ubiquitous. You see it in music, fashion, politics, and the economy. Not an exact duplication, but almost a refinement. Not a repeat, but a rhyme.

Funny thing is the frequency of this cycle seems to be about 25 years or so. So if this is correct it could explain a few things.

If a parent generation has children in their teens or later in their 30s, a culture gap forms between the generations. If this happens on a large enough scale, say as part of a baby boom, then it’s recognized socially as a generation gap.

Wish I had the time and resources to prove this theory. Until then this theory will simply be stuck in my head…

Napoleon is dead, long live… The Borg?

Been doing a lot of traveling for work these days which gave me a lot of airplane time to listen to my audiobooks.

Currently in the middle of the book, The Starfish and the Spider, by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom

The book relates the hierarchical style of an organizations vs. a flat or community style. Lot’s of storytelling here including how the advanced hierarchical Aztec society was taken down easily by the Spanish by walking into each city and the killing their king. However, when they encountered the Apache Indians who were a distributed community society, it wasn’t so easy.

It then relates this to today with what’s happening thanks to the internet and entities like eMule and Skype.

… and the disruption they’ve caused in the music and telecommunication industries. The music industry successfully sued Napster out of the free P2P market, but only to be replaced by others who were lawyer proof.

Chop a spider’s head off and it dies… cut a starfish in half and you end up with 2 starfish. The benefits of a distributed neural network.

Starbucks Usability: Pour left, stir right?

Pet peeve I have with Starbucks coffee stations…

Not sure if it’s just me. I’m right-handed, so I stir my coffee with my right hand and pour with my left. Is that true for most right-handed people? If so, and since we out-number left-handed people 9:1 (sorry lefties), why does Starbucks keep their milk and cream on the right side?!?

(RED), Ribbons, bracelets, and necklaces

A postcard from PostSecret got me thinking…

A few months ago I walked into a Gap store and found myself scrummaging through the sale items. After finding an interesting shirt (if I recall) I walked up to the cashier to complete the sales transaction. On the counter was a clear plastic box filled with (RED) necklaces. Gap provides a whole line of (RED) products .. or is it (PRODUCT)RED… I’m not sure anymore. (RED) was originally created by Bono and Bobby Shriver to raise money and awareness for women and children affected by HIV and AIDs in Africa.

As I contemplated the necklace as a token gift for my daughter, I noticed a red tag covering the original price of $12.99 which read $1.99. I quickly grabbed a necklace and dropped it next to the cashier before the transaction was complete.

Something about that on sale purchase didn’t feel right. Yes, it helps raise awareness regardless of the cost.. but I still felt dirty. Was it the sale that made me buy the necklace?

My wife has always wanted us to go to Africa for a period of a few months or more to help first hand in that effort. I’ve always tried to delay her quest for the sake of the kids, our families, the danger, etc. I’m hoping one day I’ll lose that argument and feel clean again.

Until then, this will be stuck in my (HED) …