Out with the old...

As we conclude the first half of what I had anticipated would be a year of transition, since according to CNN, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has also forecast that the world economy will not recover until 2010, it is becoming increasingly obvious to me that times they are a changing for sure!



In January, Toyota surpassed General Motors to become the world's largest automaker confirming the establishment of Japanese cars as global mainstream products and consigning the "made in japan" as a low-quality signal to the dust bowls of history. Next stop - South Korean quality.

In January we also saw Barack Obama become the first African American President of what is arguably mans most successful attempt at self organisation as a nation. This brought to an end the old expectation that a White Anglo-Saxton man would always be the next "most powerful man in the world" as a matter of course. Next stop - Madam President!



During the first "rectangle February" since 1998 the number of unique Internet users reached one billion while the number of worldwide connections to cellular networks reached four billion making person to person communications by phone (voice/text) and email as normal a part of life on the planet as turning on the lights. This effectively brought to an end the era of calling places (home, office, club etc) to get a person (mum, the boss, a friend); now we (mostly) call, text or email people directly! Next stop - iReport goes mainstream.

In the same month, Slumdog Millionaire the story of Jamal Malik, an 18 year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai, who gets arrested just when he is just one question away from winning a staggering 20 million rupees on India's "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Director. This single event made history of the viewpoint that only Hollywood can make blockbusters of critical acclaim. Next stop - Bollywood introduces Nollywood to Hollywood.


March to my mind did not bring any really noteworthy transition events but millions of people worldwide did recognize Earth Hour by deactivating unnecessary lighting showing an increasing sensitivity towards the planet by its human inhabitants. Next Stop - "What's your carbon footprint?" as cocktail conversation.


In April McKinsey & Co in their presentation “Clearing the Air on Cloud Computing” started a computer industry wide debate that highlighted the beginning of the end of ownership of Data Centres by companies not in the computing industry pretty much like only airlines own commercial planes. While cloud computing is not yet commercially sensible for a lot of companies, its emergence through the likes of Amazon and Google marks the end of an era of ICT infrastructure ownership by non computer companies. Next Stop - "Pay as you use" computing services.

In the same month, the Swine influenza outbreak hits with Mexico reporting 159 deaths and 2,500 suspected cases, the United States suffering its first death from it and the World Health Organization raising its Pandemic Alert Level to five. With the Pandemic Alert Level now at six as air travel made containment impossible, we can dispense with the ancient view of health (or other human factor issues) being contained within national borders. Next Stop - Global health insurance for all



Last month, after over a decade of computer aided warfare in most notably Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States Department of Defense announced the creation of a computer-security military command raising the use (and security) of computers to the highest possible levels in the military. Just like the use of tanks, automatic weapons and the the atomic bomb changed conventional warfare for good so now has the computer with ICBMs, robots, drones and other military uses. Next Stop - Computer to Computer warfare (and I don't mean just viruses)!

May also saw the formal announcement by Microsoft of July 2009 as the release to manufacturing date for its Windows 7 operating system (formerly codenamed Blackcomb and Vienna) for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs and media center PCs. This will bring to an end support for the widely acclaimed Windows XP operating system and (hopefully) removal of its worst ever operating system Windows Vista. According to a performance test by ZDNet, Windows 7 Beta has beaten both Windows XP and Vista in several key areas, including boot and shut down time, working with files and loading documents; other areas, including PC Pro benchmarks for typical office activities and video-editing, remain identical to Vista and slower than XP. Next Stop - Multi-touch PCs!


This month of June 2009 saw the departure of two of my childhood entertainment idols on a single day.

The lesser known of the two Farrah Fawcet popped into my life when she appeared as Jill Munroe in the TV series Charlie's Angels in late seventies. She was one of the three (alongside Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith) sexy female private investigators (Angels) working for Townsend Associates, a detective agency run by "Charlie" a reclusive multi-millionaire whom the women had never met . At that time she was married to the then so billed Bionic 6-million dollar man Lee Majors and used a double barreled (Fawcett-Majors) surname. Her distinctive hairstyle was emulated by millions of young American women and her poster sales broke records, making her an international sex symbol in the 1970s and 1980s. I will miss that sunny smile!

The other is the eternal King of Pop, Michael Jackson whose music and dance I grew up on. Each song brings its own memory of a club or restaurant in a particular city including Billy Jean (Phase 2,
Lagos)... Beat It (Moonlighter, Miami)...Thriller (After 5, New
Brunswick)...ABC (Batakoto, Lagos)....Off the Wall (Thursdays, London),
Rock with You (Studio 54, New York), Ben (Yesmina, Ibadan). Like my sister said, thank God we have didgital files that last forever.....so long childhood. RIP Farrah & Michael

"What is the Nigerian dream?" and "Who was or will be the dreamer?"

To answer my own question I did some thinking and it hit me that Nigeria's founding fathers of which my old man was one actually did have a dream! It was encapsulated in the country's original National Anthem (1960-1978) which I have paraphrased into the following prayer:

"Oh God of all creation grant this request that we build Nigeria our own dear native land into a nation where though tribe and tongue differ each generation stands in brotherhood to hand on to its children a sovereign Motherland where no man is oppressed"

Let me explain my thinking using some of the key words in the Anthem that leap to mind:

God: Not of the one or the other but of ALL

Request: A plea for the future - it does not yet exist but is a continuing exercise

Nigeria our own: Ownership and a clear sense of belonging

Build a Nation: Develop an identity that resonates with individual nationals

Though...(we)...Differ: In spite of our differences or because of our similarities (even if its just the fact that we are co-located in the same geography on the planet)

Tribe: We have an innumerable collection of groups of human beings with various cultures

Tongue: We are rich with different languages and forms of self-expression

Brotherhood: Collective harmony not exclusive excellence

Hand on to our children: Transitional ownership; succession and future focus

Sovereign: Independent and self-governing without need for unwelcome external influences

Motherland: A land of ancestors, natives and their successors

No man oppressed: Equality under the rule of law

I honestly believe that this is the unfulfilled dream Nigerians have all been unconsciously striving to bring to life and are getting frustrated that its seeds have been killed along the way and are not being resown nor grown.

I welcome all thoughts.

TD

2009 is about waiting for 2010

The global economic crisis has brought so much into sharp relief that it looks like just about everyone is looking to 2010 and writing off 2009 before it even begins. That is because 2010 is when the economic crisis is predicted to end and a lot of other things are also supposed to happen including the year kicking of with the longest lasting Annular Eclipse of the 21st century; the Winter Olympics in Vancouver; World Cup in South Africa; The Commonwealth Games in Delhi; Nigeria turns 50 (had to get the home country in!); Census will be held in the USA, Japan and Russia; the Space Shuttle program will be retired as the International Space Station is completed and NASA kicks off Project Constellation; UK, Austria, Malta, Spain and Germany will cease analog TV broadcasts as the rise and rise of the digital world marches on with Microsoft stopping support for Windows 2000.

In his book The Road Ahead Bill Gates said, “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next 10.” Keeping this in mind, it seems for me near impossible other than the swearing-in of Barrack Obama as the first African-American President of the United States and the first flight of the SpaceX Dragon commercial manned orbital spacecraft to get excited about the arrival of 2009.

Here are three things I hope do become mainstream in 2009 to make for an interesting year:

1. HPs Personal Smart Stuff Technology are dot-size stickers embedded with radio frequency identification (RFID) chips that can store and transmit data wirelessly. Coupled with RFID readers that tie in with your home wireless network the stickers go onto your MP3 player, keys, clothes, laptop and your home computer then tracks each item based on instructions you've given it about them. So if you leave home without something you had told your computer not to let you do, it would send a message to your mobile phone saying for example that your jacket is out of the house but your iPod is still home - smart or what?


2. Subscription robots. In an essay in the journal Science [subscription required], robotics expert Noel Sharkey notes that an estimated 5.5 million professional and personal service robots (a category that doesn’t include industrial robots) were sold in 2008, and says sales are likely to reach 11.5 million by 2011. Think of Sony's AIBO (Artificial Intelligence roBOt, homonymous with "pal" in Japanese) robot dog, with speech recognition, a wireless broadband Internet connection and your credit card. Babysitting robots are already on the market: They make conversation, recognize faces and keep track of kids. A "toy" for your kid that can download and deliver content and services from the Net. Pay a monthly fee and the bot will teach your child French naming things around them in French and responding only to commands in that language or subscribe to a bedtime-story service, and the bot will read your child a different book every night. This could also be a good companion for, say, your aging mother, along with a service that makes the bot follow her around, singing like Elvis. There are also the Secom ‘My Spoon’ automatic feeding robot, the Sanyo electric bathtub robot that automatically washes and rinses, and the Mitsubishi Wakamura robot for monitoring, delivering messages, and reminding about medicine.

3. Personal theater. Now that the iPhone 3G has blown the mobile world wide open, I hope Motorola will accelerate their phone that includes a micro-projector that could show downloaded high-definition movies on any flat surface, whether a wall or the back of a tray table on an airliner. With noise-canceling surround-sound headphones available to deliver theaterlike sound, here comes personal theater. Pass the popcorn please.

The Audacity to Hope for a neo-Nigeria

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said "Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world is the triumph of some enthusiasm".

Certainly the election of Barack Obama as the 44th and first African American President of the United States is historical. Yes he has and will likely continue to initiate changes in that country and possibly the world, as obviously his being the leader of the most powerful nation on earth, at the very least, symbolises this.

We however need to lower our unrealistically high expectations of Barack Obama as an individual because he will be working within a system that has innumerable challenges some obvious and many subtle. If he can focus, as he has pledged to do, on American education then he will be laying the seeds for Americas continued prosperity and future survival. He certainly brings to leadership in the USA a level of constructive intellect, creativity, goodwill and energy that has been missing for quite some time.

We need to recognise that the fruits of our African realities today were planted years ago in the 50’s and 60's when Martin Luther King, Malcom X, Haile Sallase, Kwame Nkrumah, Nelson Mandela, Patrick Lumumba, Jomo Kenyatta and others were sowing the seeds of the futures of their countries.

Barak Obama was born during these struggles; civil-rights in America, anti-apartheid in South Africa and independence in colonial Africa. Mandela was first to define the possibility of African ascendancy in the magnanimity with which he managed his jail to Presidency in South Africa.

MLKs dream of Americans not being judged by the color of skin but by the content of character has eventually become flesh in the person of Barrack Obama. As someone mused, Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther King could walk; Martin walked so Barack Obama could run. Obama ran so children of African Americans can fly.

No doubt Barack Obama has joined Nelson Mandela in becoming through personal achievement a personification of those hopes and aspirations nurtured in all of African origin to be fully accepted as human beings in our own right equal to any other on the planet with the attendant entitlement to freedom, dignity and fairness.

The question posed to Nigeria and Nigerians by the Obama/America and Mandela/South Africa experiences is whether it is possible to ever realise the dream of our founding fathers encapsulated in some key parts of the country's original National Anthem "God of all creation grant this request; that we build a sovereign Motherland where though tribes and tongues differ we stand in brotherhood to hand on to our children a nation where no man is oppressed.”

So what are the elements of the ideals in this dream as I see it?
•God: not of the one or the other but of ALL
•Request: A plea for what does not yet exist but can be
•Build: Develop an identity that resonates with individual nationals
•Sovereign: Independent and self-governing without need for external influences
•Motherland: A land of ancestors, natives and their successors
•Though...(we)...Differ: In spite of our differences or because of our similarities (even if its just the fact that we are co-located in the same geography on the planet)
•Tribes: innumerable collection of groups of people with similar cultures
•Tongues: rich with different languages and forms of self-expression
•Brotherhood: Collective harmony not exclusive excellence
•Hand…to…children: Transitional ownership with focus on succession
•Nation: politically organized under a single government
•No man is oppressed: All equal under the rule of law

I think that this is the unfulfilled dream Nigerians have all been unconsciously striving to bring to life and are getting frustrated that its original seeds have been killed without new ones being sown. Even today the seeds for tomorrow I see our leaders planting are troubling to say the least. So most Nigerians like me are still waiting on a leader who can tap into the collective psyche of all Nigerians and inspire our people to greater heights for the benefit and advancement of all. The inequity in availability of opportunities, rights and justice prevalent in the country, the shameful levels of corruption however are perplexing obstacles bedevilling the arrival of a Nigerian Obama to help fulfil the dreams of the founding fathers of the country.

So what are we to do especially when we recognise that globalisation today means that Nigeria’s competition is no longer just Togo or Ghana or Cameroon but South Korea, Malaysia, Sweden, Ukraine and others and the factors limiting our ability to compete are our people, their education and the opportunities they enable us to create? Well as the ancient Chinese proverb says, “If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people.”

We should therefore begin by starting to educate our people immediately and leveraging new tools such as computers, televisions, telephones and the internet to deliver education to people at all stages and levels of learning regardless of background, age, sex, physical and mental characteristics, creed, tribe, religion, status, income or any other social features.
Such education must aim to re-create Nigeria as a country where
•Any child of humble means can be empowered to attend the best University on the continent.
•Any Nigerian can be empowered to rise to top levels in the political sphere where they can realistically aspire to greatness in Africa.
•The political structures will provide all capable of industry with the opportunity to articulate, express and explore their ideas.
•All in the electorate can be exposed to and can receive the message of someone who is neither like them nor from their ethno-cultural group.

The price and hurdles for getting to this neo-Nigeria are still very high and June 12th is a salutary reminder that there is still some way to go. We must however remain hopeful that it is potentially possible for this to happen and continue to work towards achieving the dream.

That is why the Obama victory is bitter sweet; because while as African brothers we rejoice with him that "YES THEY CAN", it is sad that apparently in Nigeria, NO WE WON'T at least not yet. Not that we cannot, but we won't have the opportunity to; at least I don’t believe it’s likely in this generation. Why? Well will Nigerian leaders really learn from the Obama experience? Unlikely. Will they try to "ape" him? Probably. Will they change their ways and the country's circumstances for the better as a result? Doubtful. While, I remain convinced that Nigeria CAN and MUST change for the better, realistically I expect it will be later rather than sooner.

To change for the better means we must invest in creating knowledge using all the information, tools, infrastructure, processes, methods and attitudes required to succeed. As a people of the so called developing world, and assuming that the generation to which I and maybe you belong, have “missed the boat” of realising the Nigerian dream, it is still our duty to make this investment for the sake of our children and those generations yet unborn who will define our posterity.

So as we congratulate those like JFK, MLK, LBJ and others for creating the opportunity, Mr. President elect for winning, and the American people for making what we consider the appropriate choice, we can only watch with the audacity to hope that we are ourselves working towards the day when we and our children, can do likewise.

Akwaaba Accra

Having managed to survive Nairobi, Abuja and Lagos in the last few years, its Accra for me now. Those of you who have lived in Accra all your lives may not notice how cosmopolitan the city is and how it seems to be ahead of the others I just mentioned in different things I personally like to see in African cities. What are they?

I almost find it a pleasure wading through the slow but moving traffic in the morning to get on the highway to my offices in Tema - sounds weird? Try Lagos same time any day any direction and you'll get my drift.

All the food from restaurants to roadside hawkers (I mean like the roasted plantains, corn etc) alike is tasty, full of flavour and sometimes spicy just like I like it - sounds odd? Try Nairobi.

While its well ordered, there is just enough hustle and bustle to make you feel you're in a city (yes I have been to Osu) that's alive and kicking not one that empties out to almost desolation on weekends (like lovely Abuja).

I'm so looking forward to new associates and friends alike and can't wait to get into the vibes that make up the soul of this great West African city which is saying Akwaaba to me.

Redefining Presence

I have spent the last few weeks buzzing around different countries for different things and am coming round to think that our presence (As in "here") and how we think about it is subtly being reshaped by technology. Last Saturday, I was participating in an online video conference with people from different countries scattered across the globe just before hopping on a plane for another country and this Saturday I was attending a wedding that attracted people from different countries across the globe to a Church over a hundred miles away from my home to which I drove.

It occurred to me that our presence to participate and communicate in events and activities with other human beings on the globe has continued to evolve as the telephone became a commonplace tool, commercial air flight redefined travel and the rise of access to digital networks (voice and data) with increasingly rich media capabilities have all reshaped the nature of human relationships in no small measure.

We seem to be heading in a direction where as we become more environmentally conscious thanks to increasing evidence of global warming, food shortages, rising energy prices and perennial human strife of one form or the other on the global stage technology will continue to be called on to play an increasingly wider role in its support of ALL human communications.

In the first instance, what will happen is that predetermined communications that can be structured and does not require physical co-location will be abstracted and systematically programmed. Think of this as the automated use of a project reporting tool doing status reports that would include photos or videos of current activities as evidence of status integrated with costs incurred during the period. As long as activities are on schedule and costs to budget, communication from the project would find its way to the appropriate people. Should any exceptions exist or clarification be required, the message (i.e. rich media report) would be used to trigger communication with the required parties wherever they may be.

As this form of communication becomes accepted as the norm for any type of regular events designed to monitor or update human activities, and we will start to rely on the savings generated from reduced travel, meeting time etc the nature of event participation itself will come under question. Up till now, it has been the odd head of state, superstar or chief executive who could not be at an event that is "telepresent" at large gatherings, this will increasingly become the norm especially as the technology tools improve and become commoditized. Our conference for example used Skype and Justin.TV both accessible to the common man (oh well maybe of the geeky persuasion) today.

What I think I'm saying is that ultimately, we are heading to a time when technology will become standard proxy (i.e. presence) for our reactions to predetermined event activities while the emergence of richer and richer media (e.g. holographs et al) will enable remote participation (i.e. telepresence) in distance events in ways that are just starting to begin.

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Whose intellectual property is it anyway?

I am in the process of negotiating a contract for a new engagement and one of the aspects is of course Intellectual Property. For the first time I am having a long hard look at what this actually means only because I am half way through writing my book. The intellectual property one creates when in gainful employment during working hours using the employers facilities rightfully and beyond doubt belongs to the employer. The question I am grappling with is who owns what is created while in employment but not during working hours using your own facilities if it is based on exposure to the employers environment but driven by previous experience?

I know the answers are out there somewhere and I will find it in due course as I have four siblings (two sisters and two brothers) who are "learned friends" as my late father who himself was a QC would say. In addition I have a whole slew of attorney friends a couple of which I think specialize in IP law so watch this space.

Why is it important any way? Well I have spent a fair bit of time defining, shaping, guiding and directing eGovernment, technology in education and software deployment especially in Africa. So surprise, surprise I am writing a book on exactly that. Now I have to continue working in that space what's the deal on the new stuff I come up with? If you've read this far and wonder what the answer is check the tagline of this blog "contemplation; reflection" is what musing means....

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Getting back to geekdom

I have recently been listening to a lot of podcasts from CNET, TWIT and others only to realise I miss the tech world badly. I have therefore resolved to return to type and immerse myself back into the world from whence I came. I downloaded Firefox 3 only to discover the joys of Flock and its amazing built in tool kits. There is no doubt in my mind (Chunka Moi where are you?) now that the Internet Browser is the killer app we were all waiting for in the 90s. I am now looking forward to unraveling some of the mysteries (to me that is) of the open source world ove the coming months and make no apologies for self expression.

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Pushing the Envelope

With the announcement last month of XOXO (aka XO2) Nicholas and the OLPC team have again raised the bar for the low cost laptop market which he helped create. When delivered, the $75 laptop will sure make Alan Kayes 1968 invention of a dynabook future finally come true. I am not even sure we should be talking about the XO2 as a laptop anyway because it is actually designed to be three things in one:

The XO2 is an eBook reader that can be read outdoors..............

.....its a laptop with a touchscreen keyboard..............
.......and its a dual-screen collaboration tool!

For an industry that did not exist when Kofi Anan launched Nicholas prototype XO at WSIS in 2005 it sure has grown up fast. Today, the low cost laptop players targeting the next one billion users for which the XO2 design has set direction include but are definetly not limited to:

The trailblazing XO1 laptop by OLPC even with all its innovation such as the sun readable screen, built-in WiFi webcam and microphone is now been seen as pretty much old hat.

Unlike its predecessor, the 7inch screen Asus EeePC 900 is a mini notebook whose price tag has taken it away from the sub $300 requirement for qualifying as low cost.

Intels 2Go classmate PC which comes from CTL retains the ruggedness of its predecessor and is now sporting a webcam and a decent battery life though some say it smacks of a cut-down laptop.

I quite liked the multi-coloured $200 Elonex One laptop with the keyboard that snaps off to leave just the screen for use as a tablet PC and a mouse device to the rear of the screen to operate it while it is a tablet.

The Everest Cloud laptop is described as a UMPC ( Ultra Mobile Portable Computer) that tries to compete with other UMPC´s that are already on the market and does so credibly to an extent.

HP’s new 2133 Mini-Note PC is its attempt to jump on the bandwagon of aiming for the educational market.

Engadget has more if you're really interested

Speaking Freely

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