Mobil Avenue

One of our mantras here at Mobil Avenue is that social computing is not about the technology but rather what people actually do with the technology. A great example of this is the Open Architecture Challenge. It was conceived by Cameron Sinclair, co-founder of Architect for Humanity, and supported by AMD’s 50X15 initative.

Three community partners were selected from 108 applicants across three continents. For-profit non-profit initiatives on sites in Napo Province (Ecuador), Sanfe Bagar, Achham (Nepal) and Nairobi (Kenya) will give their respective communities the opportunity to help themselves.

Entrants to the challenge are not required to hold any formal qualifications and are invited to develop a design for one, two or all three sites. Closing date for entries is Febuary 29th with funds of up to $250k being made available for the chosen designs. All entries will be made available in the public domain at the end of the challenge to share all concept designs for use elsewhere.

One of the entrants is Studio Wikitecture who over the last year have been using virtual world Second Life as a platform to explore the concept of open source architecture. Theory Shaw SL / Ryan Schultz RL and Keystone Bouchard SL / Jon Brouchoud RL are harnessing the collective intelligence of 40+ “architects” from around the world utilising technology developed in collaboration with i3Dnow. Hat tip to Roland Legrand for bringing this wonderful initiative to our attention.

Every year HBR publishes The HBR List which identifies breakthrough ideas for business leaders to consider for the coming year. HBR Senior Editor Lew McCreary speaks about 4 of the 20 ideas in this video interview.

It was good to see The Gamer Disposition by John Seely Brown & Douglas Thomas, Making Alternate Reality the New Business Reality by Jane McGonigal, The Metaverse : TV of the future? by Miklos Sarvary, Giving Avatars Emotive control by Judith Donath and Happy Metadata trails by Jan Chipchase making this years list.

All are recommended reading and food for thought as we enter the Meta Age. For those interested in linking the above ideas together I recommend listening to this podcast. Adam Pasick interviewed Mitch Kapor at Davos last week and touched on many of the above themes.

Charlie Rose chatted with Ken Auletta about Google and emerging technology this week. Runtime is 38 minutes and recommended viewing. The conversation centers around Ken’s recent New Yorker piece titled The Search Party. During the interview Ken mentioned in passing Charlie’s interview with Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page back on July 26th 2001. Over Google’s first three years of operation it grew 20% month-on-month purely by word-of-mouth.

Six and a half years after bringing Eric Schmidt onboard as CEO Google are well on their way to becoming the first $100bn media company. Wireless is the business driver which will take them there. Key to enabling this is the arrival of handset devices which will deliver a remote control for life. Having been fortunate enough to use the N95 and iPhone over the last 6 months we are not there yet but we are getting there. Interesting times indeed.