Charles Leadbeater:

We Think explores how the web is changing our world, creating a culture in which more people than ever can participate, share and collaborate, ideas and information.

Ideas take life when they are shared. That is why the web is such a potent platform for creativity and innovation.

It's also at the heart of why the web should be good for : democracy, by giving more people a voice and the ability to organise themselves; freedom, by giving more people the opportunity to be creative and equality, by allowing knowledge to be set free.

But sharing also brings with it dilemmas.

It leaves us more open to abuse and invasions of privacy.

Participation is not always a good thing: it can just create a cacophony.

Collaboration is sustained and reliable only under conditions which allow for self organisation.

Everywhere we turn there will be struggles between people who want to freely share - music, films, ideas, information - and those who want to control this activity, either corporations who want to make money or governments who fear debate and democracy. This conflict between the rising surge of mass collaboration and attempts to retain top down control will be one of the defining battles of our time, from Communist China, to Microsoft's battle with open source and the music industry's desperate rearguard action against the web.

See also:

We-think is about what the rise of these phenomena (not all to do with the internet) means for the way we organise ourselves – not just in digital businesses but in schools and hospitals, cities and mainstream corporations. For the point of the industrial era economy was mass production for mass consumption, the formula created by Henry Ford; but these new forms of mass, creative collaboration announce the arrival of a new kind of society, in which people want to be players, not spectators.

This is a huge cultural shift, for in this new economy people want not services and goods, delivered to them, but tools so they can take part. In We-think Charles Leadbeater analyses not only these changes, but how they will affect us and how we can make the most of them. Just as, in the 1980s, his In Search of Work predicted the rise of more flexible employment, here he outlines a crucial shift that is already affecting all of us.

We-think: The power of mass creativity

The purpose of X2 is to identify future disruptions, opportunities, and competitive landscapes related to the content and dynamics of global science and technology innovation; to develop a new platform for understanding global innovation trends; and to present this information to policy- and decision-makers, as well as the general public, in a useful form.

X2

Examining the 50 coolest, most stylish, and most popular futuristic inventions, this handbook peers through the lens of today’s science, looking at which ones have become reality and how they work, and which are still in the imagined future—will we ever get to ride our jetpacks? From prototype to realization, the technological evolution of each invention—such as the Star Trek communicator, which has become today’s cell phone; the robot pets of Dr. Who; Vanilla Sky's cryonics; and even Sleeper’s orgasmatron—is charted in this veritable history of the future.

You Call This the Future?

Go away, the Internet is full.

U.S. telecommunications giant AT&T has claimed that, without investment, the Internet's current network architecture will reach the limits of its capacity by 2010.

AT&T: Internet to hit full capacity by 2010

The Data Sharing Summit is back, and bigger. Our purpose is to provide gathering spaces in which all parties can work together on the challenge of data sharing. We create the agenda the day it happens.

Data Sharing Summit

Six civil technologies offer the potential to enhance or degrade US power over the next fifteen years according to National Intelligence Council (NIC) sponsored contractor research. These include biogerontechnology, a energy storage technology, biofuels and bio-based chemical technology, clean coal technology, service robotic technology, and information technology devoted to increased connectivity of people and things.

Six Technologies with Potential Impacts on US Interests out to 2025

Run your web applications on Google's infrastructure.

Google App Engine enables you to build web applications on the same scalable systems that power Google applications.

No assembly required. Google App Engine provides a fully-integrated application environment.

It's easy to scale. Google App Engine makes it easy to build scalable applications that grow from one user to millions of users without infrastructure headaches.

It's free to get started. Every Google App Engine application can use up to 500MB of persistent storage and enough bandwidth and CPU for 5 million monthly page views.

Google App Engine

This is a five minute video in which I was asked to make some predictions for the next decade about the Semantic Web, search and artificial intelligence.

A Few Predictions for the Near Future

Anyone playing in the "Web 2.0" domain, even if non-technical, has likely heard of such essential components of the Web applications style as AJAX and JSON. The 'J' in these acronyms stands for JavaScript, on which these standards are built. So the strengths and weaknesses of JavaScript are directly related to what can be built in the common Web 2.0 style, and therefore what business ideas can be implemented. Now there's another JavaScript related technology coming along quietly but quickly, and so far little noticed outside of developers' circles. It is called Caja, and it may have a major impact on what can and can't be accomplished by JavaScript-based Web 2.0 sites.

Pay Attention To Caja

Rising oil prices and concerns about energy security and climate change are pressuring automakers to produce vehicles with better fuel economy and reduced greenhouse-gas emissions. This Policy Insight discusses four innovations to fuel and engine technology that automakers will be developing over the next decade: gasoline-electric hybrid technology, advanced diesel technology, vehicles powered by a blend of ethanol and gasoline, and improvements to the traditional gasoline engine. Keefe, Griffin, and Graham highlight the advantages and disadvantages of each, drawing on a benefit-cost analysis in which they calculate the value of the three alternative technologies from a societal perspective, taking into account technology costs, fuel savings, performance benefits, pollution estimates, reductions in oil use, the cost of greenhouse-gas emissions, and other factors. They conclude that advanced diesels and gasoline-electric hybrids have a promising future but that policymakers appear to be favoring ethanol-fueled vehicles through a variety of regulations and tax subsidies.

New Engines and Fuels for Cars and Light Trucks