Chief Technology Officer

Cloud Computing Bootcamp

2009-03-31T14:17:00.000-04:00

Bootcamp is a day-long tutorial on the operating details of a lot of the leading cloud service providers (and a few nearly-cloud services).

Allen Williamson from AW2.0 does an excellent job of sharing the ins, outs, ups, and downs of CC providers.

Check his details at
http://www.aw20.ac.uk/

Rush Down Cinque Terra, Italy

2009-02-21T17:19:00.002-05:00

Technology in Free Tools

CTO for the USA

2008-09-19T21:44:00.004-04:00

Mitch Kapor talks with Technology Review about the need for a CTO for the entire country.

"TR: Why does the country need a CTO?

Kapor: The underlying premise is that tech is inextricably intertwined with virtually everything. You can't talk about homeland security or education or energy without it being in large part a conversation about technology. The president will be well served if policy making is done in a more technologically sophisticated way."

Link: http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/21247/page1/

Is Google making us stupid?

2008-07-29T16:59:00.000-04:00

Nicholas Carr created a firestorm around the value of IT in 2003 when he wrote the article “IT Doesn’t Matter” for the Harvard Business Review. He has a new article in The Atlantic entitled “Is Google Making us Stupid?” Google and similar tools allow us access to a lot more information than any other generation has ever had. However, the style of the information and the mental behaviors that we use to access and absorb it are very different from the way previous generations absorbed books and detailed articles. Carr suggests that are becoming accustomed to all information being delivered as small bites that can be consumed in a few minutes. As a result we are losing the mental habit and facility to sit with a long treatise on a subject and work through it over many hours or many days. He reaches back to historical examples that have had similar effects on people’s behaviors. In summary he proposes that the tools that we use to create and deliver information shape the way our brains work and that the Web fails to create the mental muscles required to deeply investigate a subject.

Lead User Innovation

2008-05-23T09:31:00.000-04:00

In most industries, R&D is done by a specific in-house department. However, for many products there is a leading edge group of users who buy the product and immediately make modifications to meet their very unique needs. Eric von Hippel (2005) of the MIT Sloan School of Management has studied the impact of "lead users" on the development of new features for products. He describes this effect in windsurfing, mountain biking, and open source software. These customers are effectively an external R&D lab for the company’s products. von Hippel argues that they need to be enrolled by the company as partners in identifying and developing features for the next generation of products. Three criteria must exist for this to be effective: (1) the users must have an incentive to innovate, (2) they must have an incentive to reveal their innovations and share them, and (3) their work must be at a competitive level with innovations created internally and by competing companies.

von Hippel’s book Democratizing Innovation is available as a free download on his web site: http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/books.htm

MMOG on Cellphone - Resurecting Motorola RAZOR

2008-03-26T21:34:00.000-04:00

There are 10 million players of World of Warcraft and a few million more MMOG players spread among the other major titles. These people form a distinct customer group. Some portion of these are very dedicated and would take advantage of the opportunity to access and play their character when they are away from their desktop computer. Imagine that a cellphone company signed an exclusive deal with WOW to provide a miniature version of the game client for the cellphone. It could potentially capture several hundred thousand players and become the center for an entire sub-culture in society that is growing. The cell client may not allow the player to do all of the functions of the full 3D desktop version. But by giving them the ability to manage their assets, plans raids, stay connected to other players, and exchange dialog these players would spend even more hours with the game. This service might have the power to rescue a struggling cellphone provider like Motorola from oblivion. WOW exclusively on the RAZOR could reignite interest in that platform and drive sales for generations of new and better devices. At least one company may be saved from competing in commodity hell by offering such a unique product – that also makes phone calls on the side.

Annual Computer Server Sales

2008-03-06T17:24:00.002-05:00

At a recent presentation, Scott McNealy, the Chairman of the Board at Sun Microsystems, stated that estimates for 2007 were that worldwide sales of server computers were 8 million units. They believe that 1.5 million of these servers were purchased by Google. If you estimate the numbers purchased by Yahoo, MSN, Amazon.com, and Salesforce.com, it paints a picture in which server side computing is being dominated by a few big service providers. This seems to align with a statement that Sun’s CTO made in 2006 that “the world only needs 5 computers”. Most of these companies are creating a server-side infrastructure that can handle a huge load of the world’s computing needs as a subscription service, with few applications residing on the client-side (a.k.a. desktop or thin-client machines).

- Scott McNealy's Talk on the subject (somewhere on this page - they keep changing the URL)

- Greg Papadopolous' Five Computers:

Social Browser

2008-02-28T15:53:00.004-05:00

When the Internet looks like an endlessly linked set of HTML web pages, you need a browser to navigate the links - like the app you are using right now. But when the Internet is a set of social networks that link to you to friends and content that you have associated together, what should the browser look like then? Perhaps it should look like the Flock browser (www.flock.com).

I think millions of us hove been wondering what the next step in our web tools was going to be. We have been offered Firefox and IE 7.0, both nice tools, but both pretty much the same thing we have been using for a decade or so. The creators of Flock begin to see the web differently. They begin to appeal to the next generation of web users who are social, those people who "Surf Facebook" rather than "Surf the Web".

FREE ... what does that mean?

2007-12-27T21:16:00.001-05:00

Chris Anderson is the Editor of Wired magazine and the author of The Long Tail. His newest idea and next book is centered on the idea that computer and communications costs are dropping to zero. What does it mean when these resources are so cheap that they are essentially free?

A video of a presentation that he did on the subject for Nokia is posted on the web HERE

Free Computers for your Datacenter

2007-12-21T11:07:00.000-05:00

With the price of electricity getting so high, many data centers are paying in the high six and low seven figures for power every year. Given the switch in costs of computers and electricity, electric companies may be able to offer customers free computer hardware if they will just sign a contract to buy electricity from them. It is the cellphone model of selling services and giving hardware. Another example, NetZero got its start in the 1990’s offering a free PC to customers who would sign a contract for Internet services.

Death of the GPU

2007-12-06T09:22:00.000-05:00

What is the primary and overridding difference between the CPU and the GPU is a nice consumer computer? It is NOT the speeds at which vectors can be processed, it is NOT the ability or lack of ability to processes double precision numbers.

The most important factor is who makes the most money from that PC you bought. Under the current configuration a nice graphics card can account for 50% of the cost of a computer and the GPU often costs more than the CPU.

This situation does not set well with Intel and AMD. The latter has made a move to change this by purchasing ATI and working on a new computer design that combines the capabilities of the CPU and the GPU and brings more computer revenues to the compined company (AMD+ATI).

Intel, on the other hand, is changing the paradigm from inside the company and inside the CPU. Their Larrabee project is looking to perovide a multi-core chip that includes cores that can handle the graphics that have traditionally been owned by the GPU.

So what is Nvidia doing to defend their very profitable turf? It appears that they are pursuing high-applications with their Tesla product that uses multiple GPUs to handle high-compute problems. Given that the consumer desktop is where all of the money is, you would expect them to be doing their own innovation in the consumer space. That may include multi-core GPU, multi-chip cards, combined CPU/GPU architectures ... Or something entirely different.

THe situation where the GPU pulls in a significant share or the PC price is equivalent to a serious threat to Microsoft's ownership of the O/S and Office productivity tools. The power of Intel HAS to rise up to reclaim these revenues. There will be a new architecture for consumer grade computers in CPU/GPU specifically because of the current revenue share ... Intel will make it happen. The real question is why has it taken so long?

Innovation in America

2007-11-20T06:48:00.000-05:00

[Extracted from Strategy+Business.]

S+B: How is the United States losing its innovation edge?
KAO: There are two complementary narratives at work here: what’s happening in the rest of the world and what’s happening inside the U.S. After World War II, the U.S. was the big mountain peak on the landscape of innovation. Our productive capability was unmatched. Our consumer products marched around the world. We invented the platforms for innovation, linking public and private resources in university settings. We innovated financing, inventing the concept of venture capital. We had demonstrated our prowess in top-down, large-scale efforts like the Manhattan Project, but had also excelled with emergent bottom-up, large-scale innovation models like the Lockheed Skunk Works.

But then we had our Sputnik moment in 1957 and we realized that we weren’t so smart after all. The Soviets had surpassed us not only with the first satellite but with the first animal in space, the first man and first woman in space, the first space walk, et cetera. This was a big wake-up call for America.

I think we’re at a Sputnik moment today, except that it’s a silent Sputnik. There is no obvious inciting incident such as an adversary putting up an object in space that is taunting us for not being first. Look at where we stand in comparison to the rest of the world. Look at our approach to human capital, which boils down to education, and to our ability to attract and keep talent. Look at our idea-generating capability and our approach to research and development. Look at our financial capital. We have real deficits in each of these areas, while other countries are gaining strength.

Book Review: Dealing with Darwin

2007-10-22T20:17:00.000-04:00

Dealing with Darwin: How great companies innovate at every phase of their evolution. Geoffrey A. Moore. Portfolio Press, 2005. List $25.95, 288 pages.

Geoffrey Moore is well known from his two previous books, Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado. Those presented models of innovation that explained the challenges of moving from a new idea to a new product in the market. In his new book, Dealing with Darwin, Moore moves beyond the challenges of getting into the market and discusses the types of innovation that are used by companies throughout the lifecycle of a product or service. The book is targeted at established companies, with established products, in established markets. Like Clayton Christensen and other innovation authors, he explores solutions that help established companies remain in their market dominating positions.

Globalization is moving many businesses and jobs to emerging countries like China and India. Moore claims that this is a major migration in the economy similar to others that have occurred over the centuries. Economic power has moved its focus from Italy to The Netherlands. From The Netherlands to France, Germany, and England and finally across the Atlantic to the United States. He claims that it is now jumping the Pacific to reach China, India, and other parts of Asia. Corporate innovation is one key activity that is required to retain business in America in the face of this global shift.

Moore’s innovation mantra for the book is, “extract resources from context and repurpose for core.” He differentiates the core value of a product or service from the context in which it exists. A company must invest its resources in the core, not in the context. Too many companies invest widely and at cross purposes, negating the effects of many of their investments. The result is less productivity and less leverage in the global market. He offers the golfing business of Tiger Woods as an example. Woods derives 90% of his income from licensing agreements with sponsors and only 10% from winning golf tournaments. Based on this distribution of income, some would argue that Tiger Woods should spend 90% of his time and efforts managing his licensing deals and 10% perfecting his golf game. However, Moore points out that Woods’ proficiency at playing golf is the core of the revenue machine. It is the quality of his game that makes it possible to earn the other 90% of his income. Therefore, he should focus his energy and time on his core, the game of golf, and allow others to worry about the licensing deals, which represent context revenue.

Applying this example to companies, Moore suggests that each company must identify its core. Once that is done, they can determine which type of innovation is appropriate to maximize their effectiveness in the market. Moore suggests that companies fall into four major “Innovation Zones” and that there are fifteen different flavors of innovation, each of which plays a different role based on the placement of the company within the major innovation zones. The zones are labeled: Product Leadership, Customer Intimacy, Operational Excellence, and Category Renewal. In the Product Leadership zone, new products and services are being created and face the challenges presented in Moore’s two previous books. In this zone, innovation should focus on making better products and identifying the sweet spot of the customers’ needs. In the Customer Intimacy zone, products and services are established and the competition is focused on customization that will draw market-share from competitors. The Operational Excellence zone also deals with established products, but focuses on the supply side of producing and delivering the product. It calls for innovation in processes, integration, and cost reduction. Finally, in the Category Renewal zone, companies must gracefully exit from products that are at the end of their life. Companies should look for ways to loop back into the Product Leadership zone with replacements for mature and declining products.

Moore provides fifteen flavors of innovation, each aligned with one of the four innovation zones and illustrated with short vignettes from companies that have successfully implemented it. In Moore’s opinion, there is a flavor of innovation that is appropriate and effective for any product in any phase of its lifecycle. The book brings together a number of management strategies and re-labels them as innovations. It does a good job of demonstrating that opportunities for innovation exist in all markets and for all products.

Dealing with Darwin is a natural extension of Moore’s two previous books and provides an interesting model of innovation opportunities for products and services at all phases of their lifecycle.

Book Review: Dragons at Your Door

2007-10-22T20:15:00.000-04:00

Dragons at Your Door: How Chinese Cost Innovation is Disrupting Global Competition.
Ming Zeng and Peter Williamson. Harvard Business School Press. 2007. List $29.95. 204 pages.

Ming and Williamson explore the power of the cost advantage that China has in manufactured goods, and the way they are leveraging this to become global competitors in the 21st century. We are accustomed to the fact that American and European companies are off-shoring much of their production to companies in Asia. This has allowed electronic, textile, plastic, and a host of other goods to be offered to consumers at significantly lower prices in recent years. It has also created a very large trade imbalance with Asia. All of this is foundation material which Ming and Williamson use to explore the position of China in future international business in Dragons at Your Door.

The authors suggest that this cost advantage is a disruptive innovation of the type introduced by Clayton Christensen in Innovator’s Dilemma. Chinese companies are outgrowing their role as the world’s manufacturing facilities and are extending their reach to the distribution, retailing, services, R&D, and branding of products. These moves have already begun in a number of global industries, but have just begun to extend into the American retail sector where they are evident to the average consumer. Companies like China International Marine Container Group (CIMC) and Haier are becoming true international companies, supplying both their native country and the rest of the world. To do this they have begun exercising strategy, financing, partnerships, and acquisitions “in the Western style”. These companies are aiming to be international competitors, not simply Chinese suppliers to western international companies. This move will redirect significant profits from the western integrators, branders, and distributors into the hands of the Chinese manufacturers turned full-service competitors.

At the root of this expansion is the cost advantage of labor in China, as well as government support of the expansion. The authors cast this as a disruptive innovation in the Christensen style. But it appears to be more of a competitive advantage ala Michael Porter. In his works, Porter argues that a company can either compete on cost or on unique capabilities. The Chinese companies profiled are currently basing their strategy on lower costs, which has a limited duration. But, they argue that this is just the beginning of a more full-featured advance that includes R&D, branding, and unique product features based on Chinese intellectual property. Their prime example of this is Dawning Computer who offers low-cost, high performance computers (HPCs) based on the intellectual property of China’s Institute for Computing Technology (ICT).

Ming and Williamson point out that Chinese companies are not well prepared to compete in all industries or product classes. Their cost strategy works best when an industry is well established and has a dominant product design. Given this situation, Chinese companies are in a position to imitate that design at a lower cost as the basis for their competition. In industries based on the complex integration of intangible assets like IP and branding, the Chinese competitors are not prepared to mount an effective opposition.

The authors’ prescription for western companies who want to defend against this attack is three fold: (1) begin your own internal cost innovation program, (2) give a global mandate to your Chinese subsidiaries to beat their Chinese competitors at this game, and (3) build alliances with the Chinese dragons to strengthen your global competitiveness.

The story of the emergence and growth of China is not new. It follows a pattern that has we have seen from Japan and that will probably be repeated by Eastern Europe in the near future. Once an international firm gains access to the markets of a rich country it continually expands its ability to win business there. Just as Japanese electronics and automobiles are known for their high quality, Chinese industries will probably achieve a similar reputation over the next decade.

Book Review: The Future of Management, by Gary Hamel

2007-10-22T20:12:00.000-04:00

The Future of Management. Gary Hamel with Bill Breen. Harvard Business School Press. 2007. List $26.95. 269 pages.

Hamel opens by explaining that we are running 21st century companies using management ideas and principles that are often 100 years old and were created by “long dead theorists”. These ideas began with Taylor’s principles of scientific management and largely focus on creating static structures that can improve productivity and quality of products that change only gradually over time. At this point in history, however, these ideas are too static, too regimented, and too myopic to be effective among the very dynamic, disruptive, and shifting opportunities that present themselves.

Hamel’s historical analysis of management points to the following list of practices which have evolved over the last century: setting and programming objectives, motivating and aligning effort, coordinating and controlling activities, developing and assigning talent, accumulating and applying knowledge, amassing and allocating resources, building and nurturing relationships, and balancing and meeting stakeholder demands. All of these are sensible, logical, and seemingly effective. But inherent in this list is the assumption that the external environment is largely static and can be operated on in the same manner repetitively and with cumulative effect.

Although the word does not appear in the title, Hamel has written another innovation book. He insists that productivity and quality cannot be the basis of advantage in the 21st century. Companies that hew to these old measurements will become more effective at operations and with products that are increasingly obsolete. Hamel insists that companies must adopt management practices that are centered on innovation and adaptability. He presents a number of different management principles for adaptability. First, life is about creating variety, not enforcing standardization. Second, market forces within a company enable flexibility. A market environment allows innovators to be creative and attracts the types of people that companies need in the present and future. Third, leaders are accountable to those being governed and everyone has a right to dissent about the direction of the organization. Leadership is actually distributed throughout the organization, not resident at the top. Fourth, the mission or the organization really does matter. Modern organizations must be in pursuit of goals that are meaningful to the employees and for which stakeholders are willing to adapt their behavior toward the achievement of those goals. Fifth, diversity of skills and perspectives begets creativity. Organizations must structure themselves so that information and ideas can flow everywhere and come together in unexpected patterns. Serendipity in idea combination will create opportunity, value, and advantage.

In building these ideas, Hamel draws on case studies of Whole Foods, W.L. Gore, and Google. He also turns to lessons learned by IBM in its most recent business transformation. This is an innovation book, but Hamel uses it to challenge the management practices that have evolved over a century and then proposes replacements that may be more effective in the present and future. Those of us who have spent decades in traditional organizations resonate with the established practices that Hamel has distilled. But we are also aware of the limitations that those impose and wonder about ways to incorporate new practices within the old. Hamel suggests that an entirely new set of practices is needed and that they will be more effective at running a business in the future than those put forward by dead theorists. As practitioners we can choose to experiment with Hamel’s new practices or we can choose to ignore them and carry on with our existing practices. Given the extreme changes in the global business world, it appears that sticking with the past will put your company in competition with low-cost providers around the globe. On the other hand, Hamel’s practices will put your company in competition with global innovators who create products with much higher margins. The best choice seems to stem from the business strategy of the company and its plans for its own future.

Simulation as the Preferred Form of Communication

2007-10-17T00:07:00.000-04:00

[Cross-posted from ModelBlog]
Anthony Townsend at the Institute for the Future believes that "simulation will be an innate vocabulary for tomorrow's consumer, worker, soldier, and educator. They will see the world and describe it in terms of simulations in the same way that my parents used written essays and I use PowerPoint. It may well become their preferred mode of visualizing and interacting with data."

To make this possible the simulation and gaming community have to create simulation construction tools that are as readily accessible as PowerPoint is today. It has to have a similar ease of use, ubiquity of access, and accessible price point.

These tools also require/drive a data standard, which could be community generated as was XML, or commercially generated as is the MS Office Document format.

Innovation Books

2007-10-01T07:29:00.000-04:00

There is no shortage of books on innovation - they grow like weeds in the business section. Every business professor or management consultant knows that the word "innovation" in the title is good for a 10,000 item boost in sales right out of the gate. You and I have both read a number of the really flat stinkers that just say "do things differently", or "defy the status quo", or "invest in R&D", or "create cross-functional teams" ...

I have compiled a short list of some of the books that really have something valuable to say. This list will have to grow because there is an occasional flower among the weeds every year.

Amazon Listmania on Innovation

Cost as a Disruptive Innovation

2007-09-12T20:34:00.000-04:00

Dragons at Your Door is an outstanding description of the future plans of Chinese companies to use their cost advantages to move on global markets. It is a mistake to see them as an outsourcer from American companies. With their advantages they are in a position to take customers away from American and European companies that operate globally, and then to move into local American and European markets.

Watch the Digg Stream

2007-09-09T14:31:00.000-04:00

Digg allows people to tag stories they find interesting on the Internet. Those "diggs" go to a database where you can find out what people are really interested in and perhaps who else is interested in the same things that interest you.

Digg (the company) has a created several tools that are the stock ticker tape of its population of Internet taggers. You can a real-time stream of digg topics. The stream is offered in 4 different formats - the stack, the swarm, the arc, and the "bigspy". The first three are the most clever, but the last one is really the most useful.

Imagine yourself sitting and watching what people are reading on the Internet. What could you do with this information?

Digg Labs Real-time Streaming

The Grill at ComputerWorld

2007-08-30T22:14:00.000-04:00

Everyone in the technology fields has the opportunity to be buried under a deluge of free magazines. We have all been seduced into accepting just one more free subscription. Many of us receive enough of these to build an entire house or to fuel a stove through a long, hard winter. As you would expect of free publications, most of what they contain is shallow drivel that is just good enough to attract advertisers.

In this blizzard of worthless words there are a few pubs that are actually good. Every week I am pleased to receive ComputerWorld. I immediately head to the center of the magazine where "The Grill" column is hidden. They always have a quick interview with someone that I am genuinely interested in hearing from. Honestly, I do not look at anything else in the magazine. It is that one golden nugget that makes it worth getting the magazine.

What will you get in the "The Grill"?
Here is a Google list of Recent Interviews

Amazon.com CTO

2007-08-12T22:41:00.000-04:00

It seems that all CTO's are asking a similar question: How do you define what CTO's do? Who is doing it well? A recent posting by Werner Vogels, the CTO of Amazon.com, followed this same line of inquiry (see link below).

It seems that everyone wants to define the CEO, CIO, and CFO. But the CTO can just run his own show and perhaps someone will let him or her know when they have made a mess of things - or perhaps not.

Role of the CTO

The Unreasonable Man

2007-07-12T21:23:00.000-04:00

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

Man and Superman, 1903, George Bernard Shaw

Smart Documents - Help us Xerox and Adobe!

2007-07-07T21:10:00.000-04:00

Like me, all of you have hard drives full of documents that are organized into folders. But that barely helps keep track of all of the docs that you have and are interested in retrieving some day. I have innocuous folder names like "Other Organizations" and "Media Relations" into which I drop all sorts of documents. I even have one entitled "Ocean of Info" for all of the stuff that I want to keep but have no idea how to organize it.

Why are all of these docs still as dumb as a piece of paper? When are they going to organize and file themselves and come a running when I need them? A document needs to be a lot smarter than they have been in the past. Such smarts would be a huge step forward in managing the deluge of information in the world and the small fraction of that which lands on my hard drive.

Yes, I know that we are in the Age of Search, which means that Google has a solution for everything. I have tried Google Desktop on a couple of my machines. What I immediately noticed was that he machine was less responsive to simple tasks like opening documents and applications. It turns out that the CPU was busy searching, sorting, and indexing my documents while I was trying to work. It was so disruptive that I soon uninstalled the applications and returned to my old, and pitiful methods of organizing documents. [Note: I know that as soon as I write this criticism of a piece of software that another person who loves it will tell me that it has improved and I should try it again. No thanks, I am a fly fisherman of software. You get one chance to impress me, then I am off to something else.]

So I think that Xerox and Adobe might be just the right companies to look at making all of my documents smarter. Make them organize themselves and come running when I call - like a tiny ming-reading, fairy is attached to each one. Please thrill us with this simple but essential capability. My "Ocean of Info" folder is waiting to be sorted out.

Fortune Article: Xerox Inventor in Chief

Robert Ballard on Ocean Exploration

2007-07-05T07:32:00.000-04:00

Robert Ballard, located the Titanic and discovered geothermal vents on the bottom of the ocean. He pointed out that we spend more money exploring space in one day than we spend exploring the oceans in an entire year. His work has been supported by NOAA and the Office of Naval Research and has bridged exploration and military missions.

Newly declassified fact – the search for the Titanic was a cover story for a classified mission. His team was really searching for the USS Scorpion, a nuclear submarine with nuclear weapons that was lost in 1968. The Navy was not exactly thrilled when he actually found the Titanic and brought in media attention from around the world.
The hydrothermal vents explain the chemical composition of the ocean (why it is different from fresh water) and show that life can exist without photosynthesis. They may also point to the origins of life on Earth.
Using unmanned robot submersibles he is now surveying the 50% of the U.S. land mass that is under the ocean, primarily the areas around the Hawaiian and Marshall islands. He also uncovered nearly perfectly preserved ships in the Black Sea and next year will return to try to locate and extract the preserved bodies of its crew members.

Robert Metcalfe on Future Networks

2007-07-05T07:30:00.000-04:00

Robert Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet and founder of 3Com, presented some interesting ideas at a Navy conference. He described his perspective on where the Internet is going and provided advice on how to build military networks:

The Internet is growing into Video, Mobile connection, and Embedded networks in devices. Video and Mobile connections are stressing the foundations of the Internet right now and he thinks it will take 5-10 years to build out the net so that it can properly handle all of this content. However, the growth of devices with embedded networks is more important. Last year 10 billion devices were sold with embedded computer chips, most of them do not have network connection. He believes that in the future all of these devices will be on the Internet. The current net is not ready to support this volume of traffic and TCP/IP is not an appropriate protocol for that last mile to the device. He is pushing Zigby as the protocol that will bring embedded devices to the Internet.
The Internet was created by graduate students with no interest in security. He believes that the Internet is most vulnerable because it has no authentication of users at its lowest level. Routers do not verify the origin of messages, which allows spam and viruses to spread with little record of their originators.
We do not currently monitor the status of the oceans, rather we sample it with a few missions that take data at one location at a given point in time. If we really want to understand the oceans by monitoring them, then we need an underwater Internet to make it possible for sensors to reside and report from there permanently.