Logic’s End

The Android!

After spending a week with my Google Android powered Motorola Droid smart phone, I have to admit that the remarkable little device has won my praise and support in spades. It is every bit as adept at handling social media as the fabled iPhone–actually excelling in a couple of areas–and makes other competitors appear almost prehistoric by comparison. 

Most importantly, Android has achieved such noteworthy success with a mere fraction of the Apps that Apple has in its marketplace. Android developers are only just getting started. The ingeniously gallery App in the free Android 2.1 update makes the camera more usable and powerful. Photos are automatically grouped and sortable by date, and they’re easier to scroll through by the dozen. Those of you that have used CoolIris have already seen the concept of the Google Gallery App in action. If recent reports from PCWorld are accurate, then Android has only begun to hit its growth spurt. It may soon contend with Apple’s formidable numbers as the greatest purveyor of Apps. 

I digress… Although debating one smart phone’s merits over another is almost as sure to stir up an argument in your favorite pub as saying: “You were raised by squirrels!” It’s beside the point. The smart phone with the most Apps, greatest number of users, or best network coverage doesn’t matter all that much in the grand scheme of things. Support, regardless, is building in the developer community like wildfire, and Apps are decidedly here to stay. Nonetheless, the very idea of an App driven Internet raises some serious questions about the future of how we interact with our technology. 

Many of my fellow writers, friends and scholars have recently broached the question: how do Apps effect society in general? After some thought, I thoroughly reject the notion that Apps are a regressive step back to the consumerist, TV-driven society of the 1980′s. To uphold that argument, I would have to demonstrate that we have little more than tangential interaction with our smart phones (no more than can be had with a DVR). Those writing blogs would be falling off the face of the Internet, replaced by vague booking narcissists and other unscrupulous hooligans (I don’t get to use that word enough). The very idea that Apps are destroying everything that Web 1.0 and 2.0 content creators inspired is absolutely ridiculous. 

If anything, our smart phones are helping increase our production of thoughtful content, all while making the use of technology more efficient and less frustrating. Feel the need to update your blog while taking a walk in your nearby beautiful park on a pristine sunny day? WordPress has an App for that! Wish you didn’t have to wait to transfer and sort those photos from an exciting night with your friends over to your computer before uploading them to your Facebook profile? Android and iPhone have you more than sufficiently covered with Apps for that too! 

So if the production of content fits so seemlessly into our lives, how then are we to claim that we’re being reduced to the level of incompetent consumers? Using the Wall Street Journal’s Mobile Reader as a justification for the return of consumerism is an indication of a unjustified, fallacious argument.

Assuming Apps slow our thoughts down at all, they thereby help develop them more clearly (more reading, contemplation and research may take place before writing). The fact that we can read our content when it’s convenient for us–not to mention contribute social feedback–is the antithesis of blind consumerism. If practiced regularly, it might even help make us more intelligent, informed, active and aware citizens.

We’re on the verge of yet another revolution in the way we use technology. Apps are the vehicle delivering us to the other side. Those who spent hours reading in front of a computer screen might be able to see the light of day again enjoying an e-book or newspaper outdoors! Whether you own an Kindle, Nook, iPad, iPhone, Motorola Droid or Palm Pre, you’re actively contributing to the most innovative application of technology since perhaps Arpanet. It’s not just consumers who will benefit, businesses can leverage the power of Apps too. Amazon’s Android App, using image and bar-code recognition, is just the tip of the potential iceberg of rewards that Apps can help reap for businesses of all types and sizes.

All told, I guess you could claim that I’m pretty satisfied with my new Google Android phone!

Awakening from the Storm

When the storm of the financial crises finally subsides (I realize for some that the light at the end of the tunnel is still quite dim), we’ll be left with a shell of our former economy that will need to be filled. It’s in that shell that, for savvy entrepreneurs, a superb place to break ground, innovate, and turn a record profit will be found.

One could say that Web 1.0 collapsed at the end of the initial dot com boom. All of the sudden folks realized that establishing a website wasn’t going to make them rich overnight. This realization often struck just after investing thousands into building said website. It wasn’t long after the coinciding recession that the flag of Web 2.0 would be waved proudly above the proverbial ashes and companies climbed back to profitability.

Unfortunately, one of Web 2.0′s core principles: semantic search technology (being able to identity from obscurity what a person is looking for),  was quickly overshadowed by Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing (SEO & SEM). SEO and SEM companies popped up all over the map, from office parks to college apartments, all promising something akin to the next gold rush on the Internet.

The remnants of the SEO and SEM boom remain today. Sure, some companies are still turning a profit, but it’s ultimately a war that can’t be won. What’s the Achilles heal? Keywords and page rank. The entire process of fighting for the first page on Google’s results is a highly artificial process that the SEO/SEM giants have proven can be manufactured with relative ease. Sensing an industry shift, Google is gradually taking steps to counteract that trend, much to the chagrin of industry leaders.

Enter the era of Web 3.o, where search technology and marketing finally begin to mold themselves around our natural habits. Keywords and page rank will always be valuable tools, but that’s just what they are, tools. They, just like the websites of the 1990′s, are not sufficient on their own as a marketing strategy. Take Microsoft’s Bing, it’s gaining ground, forcing Google to modify it’s own technologies, with the argument that search results must be more substantial and less driven by top keyword hits alone.

Modifying the way search engines return results is the first shot across the bow, and hopefully not the last, of a renaissance. The direct hits are the social networks. From a personal standpoint, they offer several rewarding characteristics. Staying in touch with family and friends is among the best. However, it’s how these networks accommodate businesses that will set the pace of what’s to come.

Facebook has proven itself as an avenue upon which businesses may purchase ads. The returns are often nothing short of revolutionary, even for the so-called little guys (small businesses without the money to manipulate their SEO/SEM in the traditional sense). Want to target people who are newly engaged with travel specials, no problem with Facebook because they’ll tell you exactly who they are with their profile information.

Let’s say you tweet your displeasure with your local Wal-Mart’s customer service. One of their twitter community managers could instantly reply to you with something like a 10% coupon code for your next visit (a community manager is new type of career specializing in managing a company’s online reputation).

Web 3.0 is all about reaching out to customers at the very moment they’re thinking about your business. It’s fundamentally a more natural way to market. As a consumer, it’s more appealing than clipping coupons or dealing with aggravating lines at customer service desks and automated phone banks. With real-time location tracking in mobile markets, announcements and instant coupons from networks like Foursquare can increase benefits for businesses and consumers alike.

Are we more likely to buy products from resellers at the top of a list of SEM driven results, or from the recommendations of our best friends and neighbors? People generally enjoy getting a recommendation from someone they know or any other human being at the very least. Social networks provide those capabilities like never before. They complement (perhaps even precisely mirror) the ancient practice of word-of-mouth marketing. We can now determine how, where, what, when, and to whom we market. As long as we exercise restraint to avoid disastrous implications for our personal privacy, such as forewarned by Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, we can harness this technology to make the world a better place for ourselves.

When we recover from this recession, social networks will be the vehicles towing us out of it. We’re learning a lot about ourselves in the process. If you’re a business owner, skeptical of the Internet for its inherent impersonal and dehumanizing nature, social media can assist in globally establishing a level of human trust previously reserved for your local walk-in customers. Those who take advantage of these technologies stand to awake from the current storm pleasantly surprised with their improved reputation and market advantages over those who once were their most formidable competitors.