Irving Wladawsky-Berger

The Data Center in the Cambrian Age

When I started to seriously think about Cloud Computing a couple of years ago, the metaphor that first came to mind was that the IT industry was now entering its Cambrian age. 

The Cambrian geological period marked a profound change in life on Earth.  Before it, most organisms were very simple, composed of individual cells, sometimes organized into colonies, such as sponges.  But, starting around 550 million years ago, and over the following 70 or 80 million years, evolution accelerated by an order of magnitude and ushered what is termed the Cambrian Explosion, -  a highly diverse set of larger, more complex life forms.

Although with far shorter time periods, the IT industry has been going through something similar.  Over several decades, we were perfecting our digital components - microprocessors, memory chips, disks, networking and the like, and we used them to build a variety of computers.  Then about ten years ago, the digital components started to become powerful, reliable, inexpensive, and ubiquitous.  The acceptance of the Internet introduced a whole new set of technologies and standards for interconnecting all these components, not only in IP networks but across the World Wide Web, different kinds of communications, computer Grids, distributed applications, and so on.

Today, digital components are becoming embedded into just everything and connected to the Internet through an IP address, so that personal devices of all sorts, - consumer electronics, medical equipment, cars, buildings, and just about the whole physical infrastructure around us,- is now part of IT’s life forms.  We are using variations of the same digital components to build very large servers and supercomputers with hundreds of thousands of nodes.  When we look into the future, we see a not far-off world of billions of mobile devices, trillions of smart-sensors, and a variety of million-node servers, all optimized and co-evolving to support different kinds of workloads.  Indeed, it feels like IT is now entering its own Cambrian age.

The Smarter Planet University Jam

For several years now, IBM has used a Web 2.0 collaborative approach to exploration and problem solving called Jams.  Jams help discover new solutions to broad, complex problems by bringing together a wide variety of minds and perspectives.  They are essentially massive online discussions, where people contribute their own ideas, as well as build on each other's ideas in a kind of structured conversation, under the guidance of subject-matter experts and moderators.  A Jam typically lasts around three days, and after it is completed, extensive analysis is used to extract insights from the perceptions and comments of the Jam participants, and to develop plans to put the insights into action.

In 2003, a Values Jam involving more than 300,000 IBM employees around the world was used to redefine the core IBM values for the 21st century.  Two years later, the Government of Canada, UN-Habitat and IBM hosted Habitat Jam.  Over three days, tens of thousands of participants from over 150 countries, including urban specialists, government leaders, and residents from cities around the world, discussed issues of urban sustainability.  Their ideas shaped the agenda for the UN World Urban Forum, held in Vancouver in June of 2006.

Then in 2006, an Innovation Jam brought together more than 150,00 people from over one hundred countries, including IBM employees, clients and partners, to help identify the ten most innovative new ideas in which to invest $100 million.  IBM’s virtual worlds initiative was one of the recommendations coming out of the Jam.  So were a number of projects, including intelligent utility networks, integrated transportation systems, smart healthcare payments, and Big Green innovations that helped form the core of IBM’s Smarter Planet initiative launched in November of 2008.

Hidden Wealth: Science, Technology and Services Innovation in the 21st Century

The Royal Society, - the UK’s national academy of science, - recently released a report: Hidden Wealth: the contribution of science to service sector innovation.  This excellent report represents the findings of a major study on the role of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to innovation in the services sector.  It is one of the most comprehensive investigations of the impact of services innovation in the 21st century.

The services sector is by far the largest in the global economy, comprising about 65 percent of the world’s overall GDP, and between 70 and 80 percent in countries with more advanced economies.  Most of the working population in such countries are employed in services in one way or another, - roughly two thirds of all jobs in Brazil, Japan and the European Union and around 80 percent in the UK and the US.

This new report is very important and timely, given that the creation of well paying jobs is currently among the highest priorities not only in the UK, but also in the US and many other countries around the world.  As the report says:

“Our main conclusion,  . . . is that services are very like to remain central to the new economy, not least because we are at or near a tipping point: innovations now underway seem likely to change dramatically the way we live and to generate many services (though few can be predicted in detail at present). . . .”

Lessons from the "Beer Summit": To Err is Human . . .

There are a number of important lessons, if not downright teachable moments, in the July 16 arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates by Cambridge Police Sargeant James Crowley, and the subsequent involvement of President Barack Obama when he said that the Cambridge Police acted stupidly in arresting Professor Gates in his own home.

Clearly, race relations, especially the long history of racial profiling by the police, are a major part of the backdrop for this case.  But perhaps, race acted more as the kindling that caused the relatively minor July 16 incident to flare out of control leading to Gates' arrest.  And then again, the race kindling caused the incident to explode across the nation after the President’s remarks on the arrest. 

All three principals in the case, Prof. Gates, Sgt. Crowley and President Obama, have excellent records when it comes to race relations.  Rather than playing key roles in a racially tinged drama, they are role models for how people should behave in a well-functioning multi-cultural, multi-racial society.

Looking at it in retrospect, the whole incident has the making of a Greek tragedy.  Three good, highly professional, and disciplined men, each made an out-of-character mistake and said and did things that they should not have.  Why?  Because like all human, our emotions sometimes get the better of us and get us in trouble.

Reflections on Empathy

I watched Sonia Sotomayor’s Senate confirmation hearings with mixed feelings, ranging from boredom to anger.  I found some of the questions and comments so off-putting that at times I had to look away and turn the TV off.  But overall, there was a kind of fascination to the hearings, especially in what they told us about the state of the nation’s culture wars.

It was quite a spectacle seeing several middle-aged, white males lecturing Sotomayor about the irrelevance of race, gender and life experiences for a judge.  One such senator brought up Chief Justice John Roberts’ assertion in a recent school integration case that the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.  We also repeatedly heard references to Justice Roberts’ judges are like umpires dictum, declared in the opening remarks of his own confirmation hearings in 2005.

Who needs a wise Latina woman if life is that simple.  No wonder her Republican questioners forced Judge Somomayor to disown her wise Latina remark from a 2001 lecture at UC Berkeley's School of Law, where she said: “. . . I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.”