Chronicles of a Wandering Mind

A recent post by Fred Wilson brought attention to an area that is off particular interest to anyone (myself included) who has an interest on the impact of technology on society. Can technology help solve the most critical problems we face around the world? hunger, health, energy, etc.? And if so, how? Are Web 2.0 technology and applications relevant to real problems? Or are they just nice to have social toys for the developed world with no significant impact on real problems?

The “gap” between the web 2.0 world created by the digerati and real world is analogous to the one between university and the industry, or to put it differently the gap between pure and applied science. There has always been criticism of Universities and scientists for working on stuff that does not matter, has no applications or use in the real world. Critics argue that universities and scientist should work on applicable issues. Significant portion of science has shifted to this type of more “real” areas rather than pure science since that’s where there is more funding available.

Yet I think it’s mostly accepted that history shows science that had no apparent use yesterday, may enable incredible progress the next day. It is simply not possible to know which research today will become the revolutionary technology of tomorrow, hence pure science still plays a vital role. Pure and applied science has a symbiotic relationship. Applied science uses the ideas and technologies provided pure science to solve practical problems in the real world, hence also has a vital role.

Web 2.0 community and the digerati are the pure scientists and the labs of the social technologies. Just like the pure scientists that work on seemingly obscure fields, web 2.0 community is experimenting with new technologies and approaches that may enable betterment of humanity. Ideas are tested, good ones bubble up.

It may not be possible to see directly how web 2.0 helps solving real world problems, but web 2.0 may very well be a catalyzer, enabling the right people to come up with the solutions by providing the tools. To be able to see the impact of these technologies and learn from it, the ideas and the technologies created by web 2.0 community must spread to the people in the real world.

I’d suggest therefore that the inspiration that we’re looking for lies with the people who are outsiders to web 2.0 community. People who have first hand knowledge of real world problems yet may not be able to envision how web 2.0 technologies they can leverage these tools even if they are using some of them in their personal lives.

Unfortunately most of these people don’t blog. Even if they do, their posts would never get on Techmeme, so to connect with them you have to do the hard way, and meet them.

I suspect this may be partly what Fred Wilson has in mind, in his European trip. If I were Fred, I would want to talk to people who has not even heard his name before. People who work on making a difference in the field. I’d listen to what they do, how they work, what they see the problems are to see whether anything rings a bell, whether web 2.0 ideas can be applied to. I’d tell them all about web 2.0 experiments, new ideas and their promises. A multidisciplinary collaboration, meeting of ideas of people from completely different walks of life is what’s needed to spark inspiration.