Sunday, July 13, 2008

FORTUNE Tech Brainstorm: Tech Hopes, Fears, Advice for Pres. Obama

In preparation for FORTUNE's Tech Conference July 21-23, organizers of the conference surveyed attendees to provide comments on three questions:
  • 1) What is the most exciting technology innovation you've seen in the past 12 months?
  • 2) What is your biggest hope or fear for the future, and how does tech relate to it? and
  • 3) What should the top priority be for the next U.S. president [Obama]? (since the 2008 Presidential election is Barak's to lose, I'm inserting his name here -- and, no, this is not an endorsement of any candidate, especially Sen. Obama)
David Kirkpatrick captured some interesting perspectives from the survey. Read here for sampling of the comments.

Here are a few that stand out to me (not necessarily agreeing with them all -- just find the concepts interesting):

Most Exciting Innovation
  • "Cloud computing and Web services are bringing a 10-100X reduction in basic IT costs." - Rodrigo Sepulveda Schulz, CEO, vpod.tv
  • "Use of algae to create oil." - Reed Hundt, senior advisor, McKinsey
Biggest Fear
  • "High tech = supersonic speed. Business models = Porsche speed. Organizations = bike speed. Policymaking = snail speed." - David Bosshart, CEO, Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute
  • "The use of WMD, probably nuclear, in a major Western city." - Joe Schoendorf, partner, Accel Partners
Biggest Hope
  • "That people start taking transparency for granted, and that they have the courage to act on what they find out." - Esther Dyson, investor and writer
  • "I'd like to see technology give everyone on earth clean water, electricity and a cell phone." - Philip Rosedale, chairman, Linden Lab
Priorities for Next President
  • "Preserving our role in innovation but, at the same time, to not swing the pendulum too much towards protectionism." - Vyomesh Joshi, EVP, Imaging and Printer Group, Hewlett-Packard
  • "Launch an alternate energy initiative to reduce dependence on fossil fuels...like the "put a man on the moon" effort." - Padmasree Warrior, CTO, Cisco Systems

0 comments: