MIT Emerging Technologies Conference - 26th September 2007

Thought Catching

Following on from my musings yesterday about the Thought Catcher, I happened to have lunch with one of the 2007 TR35 winners (Young Innovators Under 35), who is teaching computers to read minds! I asked about the possibility of one day capturing our semi-conscious thoughts and Desney Tan didn’t dismiss the idea, but said that we’re still a long way off. However, I did discover that other science fiction concepts are becoming almost commonplace – for example, popping open the head to treat patients with epilepsy!


Privacy and Security

Also at my table was Anna Lysyanskaya, who is working on securing online privacy. We had a chat about how consumers tend to say that online privacy and security is of paramount importance, but in practice, US consumers, in particular, tend to favour convenience (ultimately, with credit card fraud, they don’t pick up the tab). Until there is stricter legislation in the US, more on a par with Europe, Anna feels that the home market for her innovation may be limited. I hope it opens up and she gets rich. Like many of the TR35, she was charismatic, with a compelling mix of confidence and self-effacement.

Whether or not the consumer demand for privacy systems is there yet, issues of privacy, security and trust were much discussed by speakers and guests at this year’s conference. The panel of ‘Game Changers’, including Kevin Rose, Founder and Chief Architect, Digg, Garrett Camp, who developed the StumbleUpon toolbar, and Tariq Krim, Founder, Netvibes, highlighted the undisputable fact that more and more private data is being provided by users of their sites and other communities like Facebook. Users need to know that the service has integrity, otherwise they will go elsewhere. Online, as elsewhere, communities are built on trust and broken by mistrust.


Like-minded people

In large part, trust comes from knowing you’re dealing with like-minded people in your online communities. Through customisation tools, you can establish clusters of these people. Social news community Digg, for example, provides three levels of customisation, the front page for the masses, a Friends view to access your group’s stories and, to be launched in next few months, a suggestion service, based on Digg’s knowing what you’ve viewed in the past few months. In this instance, users would be trusting Digg to know their behaviour and to make relevant recommendations.

The ‘Discovery Engine’ Stumble Upon helps people establish more clusters of like-minded people, even if they don’t know the person in real life or through an online community. By broadening peer recommendation, Stumble Upon helps people discover more of the web, based on previous reviews and preferences of users judged by the site to have similar tastes. Garrett Camp certainly stumbled upon a great idea - although more by design than chance. eBay acquired the discovery engine in May for around $75 million, according to MIT’s Technology Review.


Advertising in the digital space

Advertising came up as part of the discussion about who’s going to pick up the tab for all the services being provided online. If the marketing world hasn’t yet bought into the idea, lock stock and smoking barrel, that Content is King, it was once more reiterated. Through StumbleUpon, any online communication gets the thumbs-up or thumbs-down, based purely on content, which dictates whether it’s recommended or not. Flash microsites, rich in entertaining content, tended to be most popular, the panelists agreed.

Kevin Rose cited the example of a recent post on Digg called ‘Ways to remodel your kitchen’, which was enjoyable content that naturally spread – lots of users ‘Digged’ it - and made it to the front page where the most popular stories reside. Ad it turned out, it was a blog post by a tile manufacturer, but it was written in the style of social news.


Insomnia

Insomnia was not discussed at the conference, except as small talk with delegates I spoke to when they realised I’d come from Sydney. Insomnia is what I will experience if I don’t log off now. There’s more to come, even from this session, and tomorrow’s another digital dawn.