The Gov 2.0 Expo last month provided a wealth of knowledge about how governments can actually be transformed to serve as platforms. What I found interesting about the Expo -- I was not present, just following from a distance - was this sense of a huge social experiment under way. An experiment that has global implications. A lot of the themes presented were very inspiring, like Think Tank from the Expert Labs. Palantir is an interesting "information infrastructure" technology demonstrating the power of open data (data.gov and similar national data infrastructures).
These infrastructures and the apps that they are driving ought to get us rethinking how our societies function. O'Reilly says the Web 2.0 is not the redesign of the web, but stripping down the web to its essential core, similarly so for Government 2.0. Read and comment Tim O'Reilly's book Government as a platform. My comments hovered around Society 2.0 -- not a redesign of society, but getting back to basics for a more engaging and participative society.
From Expo, I found Tim's conversation with Federal CTO Aneesh Chopra very interesting. It's not that the views or ideas are so very radical or innovative. It's the fact that they are executing to a vision. A vision built on the potential of mass collaboration, tranparency and participation. The core of this vision in driven by something called the Open Government Directive. Simple stuff, not rocket science -- what impresses me is the execution -- and potentially world changing. Ten years from now we will be wondering how we functioned as a society without transparency, collaboration and participation.
See this very rich review of Expo.
Showing posts with label consumerisation of IT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label consumerisation of IT. Show all posts
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Over the last few weeks I have been revisiting the role of entertainment and new media technology in the context of the digital society and I am struck by how far we have come in creating virtual arenas. Not just to entertain but also educate and engage through simulation and virtual reality technologies. Gaming technologies are growing in leaps and bounds, so is information visualisation; as we look for better ways to manage the deluge of information.
We are pushing the development in technology but also in policy and business and, in doing so, creating this digital experience that impacts all aspects of our society and all walks of life. Our challenge, however, is to ensure it reaches all levels of society, particularly those at the bottom-of-the-pyramid.
In my very first post to this blog, I mentioned I wanted to avoid the term Society 2.0, as I was sceptical to terms with 2.0 suffixes. However, on further reflection I sense that we are witnessing a rapid transformation of societal behaviour. And clichés like global village and John Lennon's Imagine suddenly show potential to have real representations. The possibility to create a "new version" of our society is very real. A society developed by principles of "consumer-citizen"-centered design and increased self-determination. A society where democracy changes from shallow to deep, where the notion of representation is challenged. We still have a long way ahead and a lot of hard work along -- but quite reachable.
Which is why I'm excited about the "Us Now" documentary that will be screened in Oslo next week (link in Norwegian)-- and the panel session that follows the screening. I see it as the debate of the digital society entering the mainstream. Financial Times did an interesting review (link) of the film that sets the context for what "Us Now" represents. Good to note that it is less about technology and more about policy and society. And I hope the balance and interdependency between policy, technology and business is brought out during this session.
In some ways, my sense of excitement is tinged with a sense of apprehension. To see how this event pans out - will it be relegated to the yawns and hype? or will it energize to raise the discussion to a new level of debate. Will it raise awareness for the pressing need to study and examine the phenomenon closer - so we can better manage this transformation.
For now: I'm just hopeful of meeting like-minded individuals who may be able to progress the discussion to a level of seriousness that the topic really deserves.
We are pushing the development in technology but also in policy and business and, in doing so, creating this digital experience that impacts all aspects of our society and all walks of life. Our challenge, however, is to ensure it reaches all levels of society, particularly those at the bottom-of-the-pyramid.
In my very first post to this blog, I mentioned I wanted to avoid the term Society 2.0, as I was sceptical to terms with 2.0 suffixes. However, on further reflection I sense that we are witnessing a rapid transformation of societal behaviour. And clichés like global village and John Lennon's Imagine suddenly show potential to have real representations. The possibility to create a "new version" of our society is very real. A society developed by principles of "consumer-citizen"-centered design and increased self-determination. A society where democracy changes from shallow to deep, where the notion of representation is challenged. We still have a long way ahead and a lot of hard work along -- but quite reachable.
Which is why I'm excited about the "Us Now" documentary that will be screened in Oslo next week (link in Norwegian)-- and the panel session that follows the screening. I see it as the debate of the digital society entering the mainstream. Financial Times did an interesting review (link) of the film that sets the context for what "Us Now" represents. Good to note that it is less about technology and more about policy and society. And I hope the balance and interdependency between policy, technology and business is brought out during this session.
In some ways, my sense of excitement is tinged with a sense of apprehension. To see how this event pans out - will it be relegated to the yawns and hype? or will it energize to raise the discussion to a new level of debate. Will it raise awareness for the pressing need to study and examine the phenomenon closer - so we can better manage this transformation.
For now: I'm just hopeful of meeting like-minded individuals who may be able to progress the discussion to a level of seriousness that the topic really deserves.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
The chatter and twitter on the blogosphere these last weeks was about the US presidential election. And the pundits have commented and mainstream media moved on with the warning that "now, Obama must deliver".
To get an idea of the buzz, I checked out the Web 2.0 summit and was pleased to see a bunch of very interesting sessions on Web meets World that talked directly to Digital Society I have been trying to describe for the last couple of years. I watched four videos that covered everything from governance, energy and devices. (BTW, see also my post on my health care blog)
(1) Much is said abut mybarackobama.com and how the Internet was exploited to win this historic election. Watch the panel with Arianna Huffington, Joe Trippi and Gavin Newscom to get a sense of how this worked. I see the next stage is taking this to the global level.
(2) Shai Agassi used to be at SAP and is now CEO and founder of Better Place, watch this interview to get a sense of innovation through cross-pollination. Where the mobile telephony business model meets manufacturing to address the energy crisis.
(3) Larry Lessig is known for his work in the open source movement (and I have commented som of his articles on my blog). This presentation on trust is simply brilliant -- delivered in the unique Lessig format. Beyond the topic of trust, it also captured many of the facets of what I put into the term societal digital infrastructure (see also tag cloud). It also pointed me to a number of initiatives about people talking about open government, transparency and technology-enablement. Notable sites are mysociety.org and opengovdata.org.
(4) Finally, earlier this year I talked about the emergence of the dervice (device + service) and later when I commented Google's launch of Chrome, I mused about an internet device that could use Chrome as an operating system. Novatium presented their technology dervice for the Indian market. Now, if we could put an education service on this technology dervice we'd probably have an education dervice that actually makes a difference in a country like India and other similar economies.
To get an idea of the buzz, I checked out the Web 2.0 summit and was pleased to see a bunch of very interesting sessions on Web meets World that talked directly to Digital Society I have been trying to describe for the last couple of years. I watched four videos that covered everything from governance, energy and devices. (BTW, see also my post on my health care blog)
(1) Much is said abut mybarackobama.com and how the Internet was exploited to win this historic election. Watch the panel with Arianna Huffington, Joe Trippi and Gavin Newscom to get a sense of how this worked. I see the next stage is taking this to the global level.
(2) Shai Agassi used to be at SAP and is now CEO and founder of Better Place, watch this interview to get a sense of innovation through cross-pollination. Where the mobile telephony business model meets manufacturing to address the energy crisis.
(3) Larry Lessig is known for his work in the open source movement (and I have commented som of his articles on my blog). This presentation on trust is simply brilliant -- delivered in the unique Lessig format. Beyond the topic of trust, it also captured many of the facets of what I put into the term societal digital infrastructure (see also tag cloud). It also pointed me to a number of initiatives about people talking about open government, transparency and technology-enablement. Notable sites are mysociety.org and opengovdata.org.
(4) Finally, earlier this year I talked about the emergence of the dervice (device + service) and later when I commented Google's launch of Chrome, I mused about an internet device that could use Chrome as an operating system. Novatium presented their technology dervice for the Indian market. Now, if we could put an education service on this technology dervice we'd probably have an education dervice that actually makes a difference in a country like India and other similar economies.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
As I learn more about the current global financial crisis and watch the crisis unfold and expand, I cannot help thinking that the crisis is a stark reminder of our increasingly digital existence. The digital society is here and I sense we may have been able to avoid this crisis if we had some of the important bits like global governance in place.
Perhaps if consumers had been more proactive in demanding full traceability of their liability from their financial service providers, then the story could have been different. I believe a consumer-centered design of financial services could have made consumers think twice before taking on loans that they were unable to service.
With the uptake of telephony and commercial air travel our society has gradually gone global over the last 35 years or so. The advanced nature of digitisation of our business transactions has made it very easy to use services that are very complex on the inside but deceptively simple on the outside. Borrowing and lending have grown wildly and without any sense of "ownership", global governance nor traceability. The speed and lack of transparency have made this network of transactions impossible to manage -- at least from the perspective of avoiding negligence and fraud. This has happended despite the fact that the banking sector has a robust institute like the BIS that sets guidelines for monetary stability. However, BIS cannot enforce these guidelines -- that is left to the individual nations.
It is inconceivable that our physical society would have exploited the innovations of the industrial age without the standardisation brought on by national and international bodies like ISO. But, our digital society is still young but moving fast -- and I believe we have not yet even conceived the standards that are needed to enforce security, traceability and interoperability -- some of the key requirements for collaboration without friction. We are barely at the early stages of standards for technical interoperability, something that allows software to collaborate. We have not yet scratched the surface of semantic and organisational interoperability -- that what is needed for organisations to operate and govern in a consistent manner.
Commerce in the world is advancing, and with an increasing amount of value-creation coming from the service economy. Not just finance, but healthcare and education sectors. Interoperability is then a neccessary condition for good and effective governance, but this governance must be global -- not in the sense of a hierarchical "one global head" sense, but in a consensus-driven format -- not unlike the way the Internet is managed.
Can our political and business leaders work on creating this platform without stifling innovation and entrepreneurship? I believe the time is right for government and commercial players to collaborate in creating a platform for innovation for the service economy. And for consumer-citizens to be aware of their role in making this platform useful.
PS! In some earlier posts I refered to this platform as the "societal digital infrastructure"
Perhaps if consumers had been more proactive in demanding full traceability of their liability from their financial service providers, then the story could have been different. I believe a consumer-centered design of financial services could have made consumers think twice before taking on loans that they were unable to service.
With the uptake of telephony and commercial air travel our society has gradually gone global over the last 35 years or so. The advanced nature of digitisation of our business transactions has made it very easy to use services that are very complex on the inside but deceptively simple on the outside. Borrowing and lending have grown wildly and without any sense of "ownership", global governance nor traceability. The speed and lack of transparency have made this network of transactions impossible to manage -- at least from the perspective of avoiding negligence and fraud. This has happended despite the fact that the banking sector has a robust institute like the BIS that sets guidelines for monetary stability. However, BIS cannot enforce these guidelines -- that is left to the individual nations.
It is inconceivable that our physical society would have exploited the innovations of the industrial age without the standardisation brought on by national and international bodies like ISO. But, our digital society is still young but moving fast -- and I believe we have not yet even conceived the standards that are needed to enforce security, traceability and interoperability -- some of the key requirements for collaboration without friction. We are barely at the early stages of standards for technical interoperability, something that allows software to collaborate. We have not yet scratched the surface of semantic and organisational interoperability -- that what is needed for organisations to operate and govern in a consistent manner.
Commerce in the world is advancing, and with an increasing amount of value-creation coming from the service economy. Not just finance, but healthcare and education sectors. Interoperability is then a neccessary condition for good and effective governance, but this governance must be global -- not in the sense of a hierarchical "one global head" sense, but in a consensus-driven format -- not unlike the way the Internet is managed.
Can our political and business leaders work on creating this platform without stifling innovation and entrepreneurship? I believe the time is right for government and commercial players to collaborate in creating a platform for innovation for the service economy. And for consumer-citizens to be aware of their role in making this platform useful.
PS! In some earlier posts I refered to this platform as the "societal digital infrastructure"
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Looks like Chrome may be taking the role of the operating system. What with all those nifty net-based applications building up on Google's home page. Google Docs is all set to take on MS Office, the features keeping increasing and the usability is improving (still a long way to go).
Once Chrome can deeply integrate with Google Apps --- not unlike the way MS Office (and other products) deeply integrated with MS Windows --- then we will be seeing the first steps towards creating a universal computer. One that just knows how to run a browser -- and drive a network card. That's all thats needed; the rest is on the cloud -- applications and data!
Low power consumption will make it a preferred device not unlike the mobile phone. Talking of which, with the power that mobile phones are packing, phones will become computers (they already are) running a browser and using the mobile network.
Google (and others) still have a lot of work to do to create the rich user experience in a world of all-net based applications. Which is why Microsoft is pushing Silverlight so hard and Adobe with Flash. Google still has the Android-card up its sleeve, with iPhone stealing a lot of the mobile-innovation thunder, I guess they will wait a bit.
We are probably reaching the stage where consumer-centered design of services is a very distinct possibility.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
The consumer-centered design wave is taking shape. I have come across a number of stories of consumer-centricity emerging in what seems like the next dot-com wave.
A lot of solutions are taking the shape of "dervices". A what? Well, I have coined this term to represent the phenomenon of a content service that is powered by software and made available on a preferred device that is connected to the net. The service can be consumed by other generic devices as well, but the user experience will decide which device is best suited to host the service. For eg listening to music would be best on your iPod, while updating playlists would be best via a wide-screened browser or even better ... through feeds from a community portal. I expect "dervices" to be the way how Software-as-a-service will execute and how subscription-based models (as opposed to ownership) will take root.
Imagine all your devices like a humungous remote control that exists on the cloud that captures all your interactions via your devices -- mobile phone, TV-remote, GPS, Gaming console, Google-searches, e-mail, IM etc and then offers it to you through a Chumby or on your TiVo or your laptop. As all our devices become data-acqusition devices the likes of Google and Microsoft would like to get a hold of that data. Now extend the range of the devices to include devices like the Automatic teller machine (ATM), health care devices and one can see how things get more difficult to manage effectively.
An interesting service (not a dervice) that is right along the consumer-centricity path is Communispace. This service is aimed at enterprises wishing to engage with their customers in a more interactive manner. This takes enterprise feedback management to the next levels -- vendors like confirmIT may have to extend and embrace ... or even redesign.
Yes! I am happy the consumer-centric wave is gaining momentum... but am also a VERY worried that my politicians and law-makers are blissfully unaware of how the digital society around us is changing. Change that challenges the old laws and regulations!
A lot of solutions are taking the shape of "dervices". A what? Well, I have coined this term to represent the phenomenon of a content service that is powered by software and made available on a preferred device that is connected to the net. The service can be consumed by other generic devices as well, but the user experience will decide which device is best suited to host the service. For eg listening to music would be best on your iPod, while updating playlists would be best via a wide-screened browser or even better ... through feeds from a community portal. I expect "dervices" to be the way how Software-as-a-service will execute and how subscription-based models (as opposed to ownership) will take root.
Imagine all your devices like a humungous remote control that exists on the cloud that captures all your interactions via your devices -- mobile phone, TV-remote, GPS, Gaming console, Google-searches, e-mail, IM etc and then offers it to you through a Chumby or on your TiVo or your laptop. As all our devices become data-acqusition devices the likes of Google and Microsoft would like to get a hold of that data. Now extend the range of the devices to include devices like the Automatic teller machine (ATM), health care devices and one can see how things get more difficult to manage effectively.
An interesting service (not a dervice) that is right along the consumer-centricity path is Communispace. This service is aimed at enterprises wishing to engage with their customers in a more interactive manner. This takes enterprise feedback management to the next levels -- vendors like confirmIT may have to extend and embrace ... or even redesign.
Yes! I am happy the consumer-centric wave is gaining momentum... but am also a VERY worried that my politicians and law-makers are blissfully unaware of how the digital society around us is changing. Change that challenges the old laws and regulations!
Saturday, January 26, 2008
The semantics of "Healthcare services" are getting richer and "self service" seems to take on a whole new meaning. This article is the latest describing innovative health care solutions that can transform the way health care services are disbursed. There are some interesting opportunities for a welfare nation like Norway
The opportunities could be just as interesting for the private insurance business -- if not just as obvious. Just yesterday, in a conversation with a financial advisor, I learned of health care services offered by his insurance company -- both supplemental and alternative to what the state offers (not primary health care services). Since welfare states cannot match the service levels needed by a demanding population, there is a huge business opportunity for health care insurance. I guess, expecting some tax reform, in light of this competition, is wishful thinking :-)
PS! The shirt is not a new invention, this technology has been around for some time (for eg Lifeshirt from Vivometrics has served special groups of users). However, what makes it interesting now is to see this technology in the context of recent moves by Microsoft (HealthVault) and Google Health.
So what is new? Could the public and private sectors in welfare states collaborate to benefit from these innovations? The emergence of the multi-polar world and this huge marketplace in India, China, Brazil & Russia should create a solid business case for the export of lifestyle and welfare services. The public sector can then offer better services to their local populations.... they could actually be the test-bed for the next generation of lifestyle services?
The opportunities could be just as interesting for the private insurance business -- if not just as obvious. Just yesterday, in a conversation with a financial advisor, I learned of health care services offered by his insurance company -- both supplemental and alternative to what the state offers (not primary health care services). Since welfare states cannot match the service levels needed by a demanding population, there is a huge business opportunity for health care insurance. I guess, expecting some tax reform, in light of this competition, is wishful thinking :-)
PS! The shirt is not a new invention, this technology has been around for some time (for eg Lifeshirt from Vivometrics has served special groups of users). However, what makes it interesting now is to see this technology in the context of recent moves by Microsoft (HealthVault) and Google Health.
So what is new? Could the public and private sectors in welfare states collaborate to benefit from these innovations? The emergence of the multi-polar world and this huge marketplace in India, China, Brazil & Russia should create a solid business case for the export of lifestyle and welfare services. The public sector can then offer better services to their local populations.... they could actually be the test-bed for the next generation of lifestyle services?
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
In what I would characterise a landmark event for communications, Microsoft and Norwegian telco Telenor teamed to launch the VoIP platform in Oslo today (Norwegian). Demonstrating the merger of software-powered telephony with device/network powered telephony I sensed a major shift -- blurring the lines between traditional communication and collaboration --but also witnessing another example of the consumerisation of IT (i.e. introducing products from the consumer market, into the enterprise).
The two case-study presentations were also impressive; but then Microsoft are very good at recruiting early adopters to demonstrate production-grade implementations. The case studies were from Norway's largest company StatoilHydro (collaboration between land and sea/rig) and one of Northern Europe's most advanced hospitals St. Olav in Trondheim (the VoIP platform as the foundation for communication).
Again, Microsoft showed their willingness to develop hardware, even though it may only be to demonstrate the power of the software platform. The Roundtable device is a simple device with a USB-connected 360-degree camera with voice-detection allowing for automatically zooming to the speaker. The quality of the picture could have been better but anyway, it brings an audio/video dimension to VoIP in the enterprise. And in these climate-conscious days, it could help reduce travel.
Microsoft's VoIP platform (or Unified Communications as it is called) seems poised to be the "web operating system" for developing large scale mobile applications with deep integration of communication and presence. Judging by the partners present and those announced, it looks like a new wave of solutions from ISVs. The video-conferencing sector (like Tandberg) will get a boost from this launch even though I think it is difficult to say if the impact will be positve (i.e. people develop a sense for video conferencing and look for better solutions) or negative (i.e. put off buying expensive video-conferencing equipment).
The two case-study presentations were also impressive; but then Microsoft are very good at recruiting early adopters to demonstrate production-grade implementations. The case studies were from Norway's largest company StatoilHydro (collaboration between land and sea/rig) and one of Northern Europe's most advanced hospitals St. Olav in Trondheim (the VoIP platform as the foundation for communication).
Again, Microsoft showed their willingness to develop hardware, even though it may only be to demonstrate the power of the software platform. The Roundtable device is a simple device with a USB-connected 360-degree camera with voice-detection allowing for automatically zooming to the speaker. The quality of the picture could have been better but anyway, it brings an audio/video dimension to VoIP in the enterprise. And in these climate-conscious days, it could help reduce travel.
Microsoft's VoIP platform (or Unified Communications as it is called) seems poised to be the "web operating system" for developing large scale mobile applications with deep integration of communication and presence. Judging by the partners present and those announced, it looks like a new wave of solutions from ISVs. The video-conferencing sector (like Tandberg) will get a boost from this launch even though I think it is difficult to say if the impact will be positve (i.e. people develop a sense for video conferencing and look for better solutions) or negative (i.e. put off buying expensive video-conferencing equipment).
Saturday, September 01, 2007
Looks like ISPs are in for competition from a new source -- device manufacturers. Last week HTC announced HTCmail - a service powered by Microsoft's Hosted Exchange offering.
See http://www.htc.com/press_room/03-press-070828.htm
There is much talk about the next great thing in software architectures - Software-as-a-service. Microsoft has been working on making this happen in the marketplace (Hosted Exchange is quite old; I recall trying to sell the concept to a telco and a bank some 4-5 years ago). Anyway, Microsoft probably has a solid base of empirical data to understand how software-as-a-service will work in the marketplace. I think that this will be invaluable in white-labelling software (white-labelling is a business strategy like co-branding (retail) or code-sharing (airlines) that allows a player to extend the reach of their offerings -- HTC is aiming at mass market or small businesses who could not be bothered by installing or configuring Exchange installations)
I'm not quite sure what Microsoft's SaaS strategy is, but I would suspect they are looking to attract other players to distribute services from their Live-portfolio. Could P&C insurance vendors be mature partners? or banks? After all they have been white-labelling for some time now. And then, should Telcos focus on delivering high-quality access for these services?.. or should they aggressively go after digital content? Probably both.
Disruption appears to be more the rule than the exception.
See http://www.htc.com/press_room/03-press-070828.htm
There is much talk about the next great thing in software architectures - Software-as-a-service. Microsoft has been working on making this happen in the marketplace (Hosted Exchange is quite old; I recall trying to sell the concept to a telco and a bank some 4-5 years ago). Anyway, Microsoft probably has a solid base of empirical data to understand how software-as-a-service will work in the marketplace. I think that this will be invaluable in white-labelling software (white-labelling is a business strategy like co-branding (retail) or code-sharing (airlines) that allows a player to extend the reach of their offerings -- HTC is aiming at mass market or small businesses who could not be bothered by installing or configuring Exchange installations)
I'm not quite sure what Microsoft's SaaS strategy is, but I would suspect they are looking to attract other players to distribute services from their Live-portfolio. Could P&C insurance vendors be mature partners? or banks? After all they have been white-labelling for some time now. And then, should Telcos focus on delivering high-quality access for these services?.. or should they aggressively go after digital content? Probably both.
Disruption appears to be more the rule than the exception.
Monday, January 19, 2004
The Digital Society is a term I came up with some time ago, with the idea of extending the "hype" of the Digital Home to other areas like school, eGovernment etc. I hope the term Digital Society does not suffer the same "hyped" fate of terms like the Digital Home or eCommerce before that. The use of the 2.0 suffix appears to go the same way, so I deliberaty will not use Society 2.0
So, what exactly is the Digital Society? The Digital Society aims to capture the essence of placing the citizen at the center of digital services --regardless of where these services come from -- entertainment companies, Government, my employer, my bank etc.
To make this concept more understandable. I propose 5 different settings or scenarios:
A) Entertainment - Music, photos, videos, films etc. Produced by me or professionally
B) Security and comfort - Managing the appliances at home, surveillance, healthcare services
C) Shopping and commerce - Banking, shopping
D) Work - Sharing documents and tools to do office work and school/college work
E) Citizenry - Utilising government services for tax, welfare etc
As mentioned earlier, the key to the concept is "user-centricity" -- where the user, based on her/his lifestyle preferences, will have different uses for the digital services. The rationale for this "user-focus" lies in the lessons learned from the PC-era.
Consider the mid 1980s, the mainstream office PC was invented, Ethernet was commercially available, client-server software architecture was gaining attention. By early 1990s we had a massive proliferation of software and the de-centralisation of IT-management. From the chaos of this proliferation, we emerged with user-centered design as a key element of software design. Today, we have muliple devices (not just the PC), Internet (not just Ethernet) and we have Service Oriented Architecture (evolved from client server). It is then, tempting to extrapolate the experiences from the PC-era and expect the emergence of "Consumer Centered Design" as a key element for creating digital services.
PS! I wonder why service providers like Telcos do not realise that, their way to segment the customer (i.e. private or corporate) blatantly ignores the fact that I am BOTH a private and a corporate customer (I am me!!).
So, what exactly is the Digital Society? The Digital Society aims to capture the essence of placing the citizen at the center of digital services --regardless of where these services come from -- entertainment companies, Government, my employer, my bank etc.
To make this concept more understandable. I propose 5 different settings or scenarios:
A) Entertainment - Music, photos, videos, films etc. Produced by me or professionally
B) Security and comfort - Managing the appliances at home, surveillance, healthcare services
C) Shopping and commerce - Banking, shopping
D) Work - Sharing documents and tools to do office work and school/college work
E) Citizenry - Utilising government services for tax, welfare etc
As mentioned earlier, the key to the concept is "user-centricity" -- where the user, based on her/his lifestyle preferences, will have different uses for the digital services. The rationale for this "user-focus" lies in the lessons learned from the PC-era.
Consider the mid 1980s, the mainstream office PC was invented, Ethernet was commercially available, client-server software architecture was gaining attention. By early 1990s we had a massive proliferation of software and the de-centralisation of IT-management. From the chaos of this proliferation, we emerged with user-centered design as a key element of software design. Today, we have muliple devices (not just the PC), Internet (not just Ethernet) and we have Service Oriented Architecture (evolved from client server). It is then, tempting to extrapolate the experiences from the PC-era and expect the emergence of "Consumer Centered Design" as a key element for creating digital services.
PS! I wonder why service providers like Telcos do not realise that, their way to segment the customer (i.e. private or corporate) blatantly ignores the fact that I am BOTH a private and a corporate customer (I am me!!).
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