Sounds Like the Future

http://www.smule.com/

Have you seen or heard about this application for the iPhone?

"As an instrument Ocarina has been perfectly executed... This is how an iPhone app should be done." - TechCrunch

With this iPhone app, you can actually see where people around the world are using this musical device at the time you are using it. Your musical offering, reflected in some way, around the globe.

My long time friend and colleague, Rachel Allgood, could not wait to show me this and point out that the iPhone makes you think. For instance, what does this kind of application really mean. Rachel is one of NYC's great designers and business strategists. She created Isocurve to help clients actualize their true ideas. www.isocurve.com

When I experienced the application, several things came to mind. Medical emergencies and health care services are greatly supported by communal understanding. Like the iPhone Ocarina, one can easily imagine the powerful ability to immediately share critical information around the globe for people experiencing similar emergencies. Health care, terrorist threats, and even less traumatic episodes can be affected by immediate community understanding. Certified Diabetes Educators for example, have substantive experience to share. Instant networking can be very helpful to explore what many people are going through, as they are actually living through the events, creating mass solutions and customized help.

Innovations like "the retailing of medicine" and "home medicine" are also related. People will input medical data by remote control in order to have prescriptions, nursing assignments and assisted treatments arranged. Mass customization in the terms that the originator of that phrase intended. What a customer wants, when they want it.

There is also another interesting notion that may lie underneath this ability to see how many people around the world are playing the Ocarina. True, the iPhone is providing a fun and startling visualization. This deeper value however, is something that I have written about before.

In today's world, communication and implementation are often simultaneous. This gives an entirely different understanding of value chains and integrated supply chains. With the creation of E bay, we entered the distribution of goods and services from the buyer's perspective, not the manufacturer's. This was transformation based on continuous development. In this way, collective intelligence enables collective instinct to move into action. The iPhone Ocarina begins to sound like the future to me.

When I was a young boy, I loved going to the World's Fair in Queens NY. One thing I clearly remember, was an electronic game at the AT&T pavilion. I played it over and over. My memory tells me that the participant was pushing buttons on a display to distinguish sounds. The World's Fair was full of technology and talent. At that time, and for a long time, Bell Labs was creating two pattens a day.

Eventually, (and I could be making this up, but I think not), I realized that AT&T may have been collecting data on how people would be able to transform from rotary dial sounds to digital sounds when making phone calls. It was the beginning (1964), of the move to digital phones.

What does the iPhone Smule experience mean for you? It clearly is not just about the fantastic ability to see where people around the world are using the musical tones as you are.

Years ago, I produced several video's for AT&T on subjects like the democratization of technology. Doctors in the future for example, were shown using IM or video conferencing during emergency surgeries to share expertise.

Bell Labs also had other agendas. Good ones.

They wanted legislators to understand that in the future, freedom to share critical information at critical times would be imperative and expected. Consequently, they really did not want law makers establishing rules affecting future technology without respecting the need to understand more before creating such laws.

Well, Rachel is right as usual. The iPhone makes me think. And it makes me think about things I care about.

My imagination may be based on reality or not. But as one great philosopher said: "Reality, not the real is dependant upon care".

Sal