Magic in technology happens when experimenting happens and opportunities that appear in unexpected places are seized.
This is a view held by Simon Dingle, independent writer, broadcaster and technology analyst. Speaking to delegates at the Rectron Roadshow at The Campus in Bryanston yesterday, Dingle shared how the expansion of recorded knowledge, fuelled primarily by mobility, has grown at such a rapid pace that humanity faces a challenge of drowning in this sea of information.
The key factor, according to Dingle, is how humanity moves away from a tendency to shoehorn new technologies into old paradigms.
"Given the opportunities presented by the explosion of mobility, we must, instead, be looking to experiment with technology," remarks Dingle.
He used the music app Ocarina 2, which is available on the iPhone, as an example.
The app, explained Dingle, has been adapted from a family of Ocarina music instruments (believed to date back 12 000 years), and preserved into the iPhone.
"It plays through detecting and responding to the user's touch, breath and movement. It then enables the user to locate others who are playing at the same time on the world map. With experimentation, this will eventually result in real-time, cross country or continent music collaborations, all from your smartphone," explained Dingle.
Another critical area that is hugely driven by mobility, according to Dingle, is Internet connectivity.
"The growing access to smartphones, particularly on the African continent, has seen Internet connectivity reach some places before electricity even does. This marks the African market as a huge contributor to the growth of Internet platforms such as Youtube, estimated to be growing by 100 videos per minute, and Twitter which boasts estimates of over 100 million active daily users," Dingle said.
This, he added, presents immense opportunities for technology to have impact in markets that were previously inaccessible or ignored.
To illustrate this point, Dingle talked about the iCow mobile app which was developed by Internet-on-mobile services company Safaricom, and is used by farmers in Kenya.
"The app has a feature called Kalenda, which offers farmers nutritional and vaccination tips for their cows during gestational period and up to birth. Mashauri is another feature that sends farmers three SMS tips every week on dairy farming," explained Dingle.
Through these monitoring and feedback gateways, noted Dingle, farmers have been able to reduce cow and calf mortality and thus grow their greatest asset base.
"Mobility is driving technology to answering questions we didn't even know we should be asking, leaving us in awe as to what's possible," said Dingle.
With this evolution, he concluded, it's not a matter of if, but when Internet connectivity spreads to all corners of the planet; companies should already have systems in place to seize the opportunities.
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