The Future As Seen By Me In 2010

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Well looky here, things one has scanned in eh. (ignore the photo, that's some guy that made some accounting software, not sure what became of him ;) MIKE RIVERSDALE is fuming. The expensive headphones he bought in Sydney three weeks ago have just died. His first reaction is not to randomly spill expletives into his coffee, but to use his iPhone to vent his frustration to his Twitter con- tacts, under the moniker Miramar Mike. "I will also put, 'What should I do?' It's a conversation. I'm reaching out to the people following me." The council predicts hand-held digital devices such as smartphones will rule the world in 2040. They already rule the life of Mr Riversdale, whose company WaveAdept helps businesses adapt - their computing sys- tems to allow staff to work from anywhere - and with anyone. In order of fre- equency, he uses his iPhone to tweet (1136 followers; 8363 tweets since joining), e-mail, make phone calls and use online services, such as checki
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Google Is A Faceless Machine

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Being a faceless machine brings with it some comfort, a human is not interfering in your emails, someone isn't reading your documents and a person doesn't check your calendar.

However, there is a dark side to being a machine. It devolves you of having human traits such as compassion, awareness and a sense of justice.

Google isn't alone in this, Microsoft have for years been seen as a closed software factory and that you were either on the "inside" or you were on the "outside". Yahoo! has also suffered but not to such a large extent. In fact, Yahoo!'s purchase of Flickr meant they had bought the poster boy of "being human" where you can, to paraphrase Nat Torkington, "Feel the humanity front and centre". I s'pose it's hard to be a machine when all you deal with is photos as cute as this.
(on a side note, I'm still unconvinced which way the new Delicious has movbed - machine or human?)

Google, however, is most definitely the modern archetypal "corporate machine" famous for not revealing future plans, never talking about the "opposition" and not allowing comments on their blogs.

And when it goes 'Google wrong' for a person the machine can seem quite cold:
(thanks to Dave for the original link)

On the positive side for Google they do seem to react VERY quickly when they fvck up - and with a human response which proves there are actual humans inside that machine pulling the levers. But it may be a lot harder to build trust.

How does this affect you?
If you work within a "service department" (IT?) answer this question for me:

Are you perceived as being a Google or a Flickr by the people you service?

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The Future As Seen By Me In 2010

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