Fourth Revolution | The Fourth Revolution Blog

Participate to worldwide competitions to leverage the collective cognitive capability!

Have you heard of kaggle.com?

It is a site to run workdwide competitions on data mining – how to use data to predict trends and other useful results.

For example, it has run competitions about predicting whether people will attend hospital next year based on their current medical history; how the condition of HIV infected people will evolve based on a limited set of current physiological data. Ford has posted a challenge to help devise an algorithm to decide if the driver is alert…

By leveraging the collective cognitive capabilities of humankind, clever solutions are found quickly that would have taken years and millions of dollars to develop. Winners get recognition by being invited to present their result – or can get 3,000,000$ by solving the problem of hospital admission prediction and thus anticipate the degradation of the condition of the patients.

Ready to participate to the Fourth Revolution? – put your brains at work for the best in one of these number-crunching competitions.

Right now you can participate in the Wikipedia prediction challenge – develop an algorithm to predict how many edits an editor will make in the next few months based on his contribution history – and beat years of Wikipedia internal data-crunching! Ready?

Co-creation or the Fourth Revolution in action

I cannot recommend enough the book “The Power of Co-Creation” by Venkat Ramaswamy and Francis Gouillard.

The power of co-creation cover — The power of co-creation book cover

This book is a perfect illustration of the Fourth Revolution at work. It shows how companies and organizations are leveraging the power of co-creating with their customers, suppliers and other stakeholders to create unprecedented value. Value not just for them, but also for the entire community they create.

Furthermore the book is packed with case studies and examples from a variety of industries and types of organizations.

For those that would still doubt it just demonstrates that the future lies in open, fluid organizations that actively co-create with a community extending beyond their boundaries.

Read again part V of the Fourth Revolution Manifesto: the open, fluid organization!

When do you start co-creating the unprecedented value of the Collaborative Age?

How to publish worldwide, from anywhere

Here is a summary of my experience of self-publishing from a country which has an emerging economy (Malaysia). Even from there, today anybody can stand up and publish to the world his or her ideas. All it takes is time and a really not a lot of money.

Obviously there is no shortcut to the creative work of producing the book, manifesto or whatever you want to spread. You still need to get the rights to the material you want to use (pictures…) and possibly get an editor for an independent review of the text.

Then, for anything between 0 and 50$/year you can have your website and blog up and running, publishing to the world, interacting with the world.

For around 70$ you can have an agreement with LightningSource, the Print-on-Demand leader, send the electronic files of the book over and in less than one month, be present on all the electronic bookshops around. You can touch easily the developed countries, and anybody worldwide willing to pay for having the books sent.

In Malaysia I found it better to go the traditional way of distributing my book, by printing a number and letting distributors put them in bookshops. That requires a bit more capital upfront – say 2,000$ for printing 500 books. Still that’s quite affordable, but less easy to come with.

In summary – it is not so difficult to publish your ideas. How come there are still some traditional publishing companies around?

The Fourth Revolution spreads: now (almost) on Amazon!

Breaking news: The Fourth Revolution book is now on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes&Noble.com etc etc !

Follow the links:

The Fourth Revolution book on Amazon.com

The Fourth Revolution book on Amazon.co.uk

OK, seems like that everything is not setup completely, I suppose that’ll be done in a few days, and then orders will be available. I am also working on my author’s profile and so on…

But, just figure that out. I write a book. I self-publish it. In Malaysia, far from Europe or the US (and I could have been anywhere I guess!). I sign an agreement with a Print-on-demand company. I send the electronic files over. 2 weeks later I receive a proof copy. 1 more week and my book is available all over the world. Anybody can read my ideas, debate with me! This setup cost me 70$ only!. WOW. Who can deny that the Fourth Revolution is there, today?

Do you know Google table of code elements?

Google has decided to put together all their products in an impressive presentation, the Google table of code elements.

Google

The fact that it looks like the periodic table of elements of chemistry (Mendeleev table) is not a coincidence. The Mendeleev table was invented in 1869 as a classification of the new discoveries of the Industrial Age in chemistry.

Isn’t Google presentation presumptuous? Anyway it gives a good view of all the types of applications on the market today. These can be expected to still grow significantly and branch out as, further in the Fourth Revolution, we will invent new ways to leverage the power of long distance connectivity.

Have a look at this interesting view of the world of applications as it unfolds!

Fourth Revolution at work: who will change first of China or Google?

The fate of Google in China is a very interesting event. Combined with the Arab Revolutions, gives food for thought about the impact of the Fourth Revolution on autocratic governments.

An article from CNN gives a detailed account of the misfortunes of Google in China. It is a bit long, but it is worth the read. In particular, because it shows how the uncompromising attitude of Google frontally collided with the suspicion of the Chinese officials. That was certainly quite a cultural shock!

So, let’s take a high level view looking at what will certainly happen in the future. China will certainly be able to develop on its own tools that will give a similar service to Google, Facebook etc. The Chinese characters help, and China is a big enough country to have everything done in their native tongue. Still, isn’t China taking a path, that on the long term might isolate it from the creativity of the Collaborative Age?

That might be the case. We already see that China being the manufacturer of the planet, had developed services much slowly than India. That is maybe the long term communist mindset (an Industrial-Age oriented mindset). India is democratic, open on the internet, developing myriads of Fourth Revolution applications using the most of long distance communication.

Who will win? I have a guess. On the long term, being isolated from the waves and currents of global creativity is not sustainable. China is large, has its own language, and might resist a bit longer than smaller countries. Still the Fourth Revolution calls for inclusion in the stream of the world.

China will need to change or will crumble. And that might be soon, so quick are the changes of the Fourth Revolution.

And what about Google? It might also need to change, as it seems. Let’s make a guess? Who will change dramatically first? China or Google?

The e-brain drain of the Fourth Revolution

I just found out that the world is not flat. The leveling of the world with the Fourth Revolution is a myth.

I’m living in an emerging country, Malaysia. With the Fourth Revolution, I feel a citizen of the world. I can connect to blogs and ideas from anywhere in the world. I can correspond with people from everywhere.

And then I decided to write a book, and self-publish it so that it can be available worldwide, using those terrific modern tools like Amazon, e-book versions etc. It looks so simple to do that!

Well- that’s probably the case – if you live in a developed country!

Worldwide distribution on e-stores is where the problems started. I discovered that you can’t download Kindle e-books in Malaysia and Singapore. That the Malaysian authority delivering the ISBNs (unique worldwide book numbers) apparently was never asked for ISBN’s for e-books (they are still wondering what to do with that request). That you can’t upload a book as a Kindle if you don’t have a bank account in the US, UK or euro zone (which fortunately, I have). etc etc

Let’s look beyond this simple example. If I’m living in a developing or emerging country today, and want to share my ideas, I can open a blog or a Facebook page. That’s fantastic. Now, if I want to publish and distribute a book or something more tangible, I need to use developed countries’ companies – and there are significant hurdles to overcome.

Effectively, the developed countries still drain the brains the world, now on internet.

Entrepreneurs of the emerging countries, raise to unleash the potential of your countries! Join the Fourth Revolution infrastructure!

What do you think? Did you encounter such issues?

Keep out of the dinosaur area

That’s probably the sign we should put on the fence of the large Industrial Age companies.

For two reasons.

One, you’d better keep out because that’s not going to be fun when they will be overwhelmed by the value generated by the Fourth Revolution. They will resist and fight and destroy what’s too close.

Second, if there is a fence around these organizations, for sure they are not open organizations. And they cannot benefit from the value of collaboration.

So keep out of the dinosaur area. They’re going to be wiped out. The more adaptable and flexible will prevail.

The Fourth Revolution Book is printed!

The Fourth Revolution book is finally printed! I received the first copies today!

While it will be first distributed physically in Malaysia and Singapore, distribution will be soon worldwide with a Print-On-Demand solution.

In this detailed book you’ll find all the concepts of the Fourth Revolution explained in detail. What is most valuable is the historical perspective, looking at what happened in the previous Revolutions, to better understand what is happening.

I look forward to receiving your feedback on the book!

It will be available within one month in most distribution channels – in the meantime directly from me (I still need to figure out the logistics!).

The new era: we are now in the year 12 A.G. (After Google)

Did you know that the Fourth Revolution marks the beginning of an era?

I mean, a new Era that starts again the Calendar? Like B.C. and A.D.?

Some people now count the years as B.G. (Before Google) and A.G. (After Google).
Google was incorporated in September 1998, do the maths!

That also works the other way round – I was born in 26 A.G.. I really feel like from the past era!

And you, do you feel you belong to the B.G. or to the A.G. generation?

Social networks and revolutions: the controversy

There is a controversy ongoing about the role of social networks in the recent movements and revolutions in the Arab world.

Everybody agrees that social networks played an important role, but was it decisive? In other words, would these revolutions have happened without social networks?

Refer to this article “Is Social Networking Useless for Social Change? A Response to The New Yorker’s Malcolm Gladwell” to get a sense of the controversy.

My opinion is that Malcolm Gladwell is still in the Industrial Age mindset that expected a group of people to get together to broadcast something to society. Today we are beyond this. We don’t need a small group of people to devise something intelligent and broadcast it as a platform for social change. Everybody is exchanging and coordinating together on social networks and that creates the fertile ground of social change. And governments that are still in the broadcast-control mode will be swept away by the wave of change. Because the control of broadcasting, which was the foundation of power, is now obsolete.

What do you think about this controversy?

Track your stolen laptop from hundreds miles away and get your social network friends to retrieve it!

Incredible story that only demonstrates the power of the Fourth Revolution and social networks. At the end, social network contacts of the victim retrieve the laptop!!

Man tracks stolen laptop hundreds of miles away, calls thief – Storify. “I watched this all happen on Twitter a few nights ago, and it was thrilling, and while this *actually happened*, it revealed a really exciting possibility for new forms of live, participatory story-telling: Sean Power had his laptop stolen in NYC, but had to return to Montreal. He had a bit of software on the laptop (Project Prey) that can be activated to start recording what’s going on on your laptop, including taking webcam pics of whoever is using it, and broadcasting to you what’s happening on your computer in real time. Sean Tweeted about the stolen laptop, then activated Prey. Clues were immediately revealed, a picture of the thief! (Tweeted) Then the thief logged into Skype – we had a name (Tweeted)! Logged into Gmail! We had an email address! (Tweeted). Using Prey, Sean could also locate his laptop – at resto called Cantina Latina in NYC… a woman Sean doesn’t know, but who follows him on Twitter, went to the resto – Sean called the cops… It was a pretty exciting bit of real-life story-telling, and it shows some wonderful hints about how we might use tools like Twitter for creating new kinds of fiction (an interest of mine)…This link is to a Storify collection of the event.”

Highlighted by Mitch Joel in his regular blog Six pixels of separation post “six links worth of your attention“

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30