The dishwasher and the Internet December 3, 2008
Posted by Dan Herman in Economics, Internet, Technology.Tags: Demographics, Economics, Internet, Technology
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SITRA, the Finnish Innovation agency, is a Helsinki-based partner organization of ours that thinks about how new innovations, investment choices and models of governance can help promote the welfare of Finnish society and Finnish competitiveness.
They recently hosted nGenera Chairman Don Tapscott and Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang (both of whom I’ve had the pleasure of working with) for a conversation about the Future of the Public Sector. You can view all the videos from this event, and many others, here.
Don argues that the Net Generation and the Web 2.0 are ushering in a series of fundamental changes to the way governments operate; how they provide services and create policy; how they structure the workplace; and how they increasingly look to citizens to play a role in all of those areas.
Dr. Chang on the other hand takes a more cautious approach noting that the most visible and seemingly revolutionary ideas aren’t always the real change agents. He introduces an interesting question of whether (more…)
Voting and technology October 7, 2008
Posted by Dan Herman in Government, Internet, Politics.Tags: Government, Internet, Politics
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Much has been written bout the impact of collaboration and social networks on the election south of the border. The allure of Obama vs. McCain, not to mention their respective approaches towards technology makes for an interesting case study.
But if you’re Canadian and concerned that either the current Conservative government will get a majority hold of Parliament, or conversely concerned that it will fail to do so, then there are several appropriate story lines to follow up North. The first is a growing Facebook group called ‘Anti-Harper Vote Swap Canada,’ which now boasts over 12,000 members.
The group works as follows: (more…)
Mobile banking and innovation September 26, 2008
Posted by Dan Herman in Banking, Internet.Tags: Banking, Internet, Mobile
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A few months ago I wrote about the mobile banking solutions I found while travelling in Africa – essentially a series of PayPal-like systems for mobile users. Given the limited nature of financial services in the region, and the overall paucity of infrastructure, these innovations make sense.
But do they make sense in more developed markets? That’s still very unclear.
RBC (Royal Bank of Canada for non-Canadians) recently rolled out a trial for their own mobile banking solution. RBC Mobex is billed as an “innovative payment solution designed for use with your existing mobile phone to make life more convenient for you. Just imagine, you already use your mobile phone to access friends, family, work and play: now you can use it to access your money too. Use it when you don’t have cash in your wallet, there isn’t an ATM nearby or cheques and/or debit / credit cards are not accepted forms of payment.”
The value of such systems comes with scale. (more…)
Net Nations or Global Gov? July 28, 2008
Posted by Dan Herman in Demographics, Geo-politics, Internet, Technology.Tags: china, Economics, Internet, Technology, Values
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Interesting statistics announced today by the China Internet Network Information Center (CINIC) that 253 million people in the country are now online, meaning China now has the world’s largest number of Net users in the world (topping the US’ 223 million). These numbers are still much inferior to the country’s stock of mobile-phone users (500 million) but nonetheless, the continued growth of China’s online participant community bears watching. Least of all because the current user-base represents a penetration rate of only 19% suggesting that as the country develops, and as infrastructure spreads West throughout China, it will dwarf the rest of the worlds (i.e. start publishing/marketing in Mandarin). CINIC projects the number of Chinese users to grow to 490 by 2012.
The growth of China’s online community has been acknowledged by many within the Chinese Communist Party, including the country’s most powerful leader, Hu Jintao. In mid-June he took part in an online web-chat at the People’s Daily website that marked the first time a senior party official publicly engaged with internet users. While commentators noted that “there was no real substance to the online conversation,” it has since been referred to as symbolic of the central governments acknowledgement of the internet as an important source of public information and public opinion. (more…)
