Institute For The Future

Let's conference!

I haven't even finished blogging about our own health conference last week, and already I am deeply immersed in the Health 2.0 conference.

This morning, Clay Shirky gave the opening keynote. He is a great speaker (you can click here to watch the video of Clay discussing his book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School). He addressed physicist PW Anderson's idea that "more is different," that a mass of things behave differently together than they do individually. Clay hit in on three key areas of change: information, coordination, and collaboration. My biggest take-away fell under his discussion of information. Noting that people are the most valuable part of the Internet, Clay observed that information flows to where people trust each other. "Trust is in the eye of the beholder," and it is not about technology.

For me, this last point has been one of the shortcomings of this conference. It has offered several "show & tell" opportunities, and I have learned about a lot of interesting techology companies. But I have heard very little about the consumer experience, about the people who actually might use these platforms or devices. It seems to me that you can develop really cool technology, but if nobody uses it, what's the point? That connection seems to be missing here.