Opening Keynote with David Pogue #DevLearn

These are my live blogged notes from the opening session at this year's DevLearn, hosted by the eLearning Guild and happening in Las Vegas. Forgive any typos and incoherencies.

Disruptive Tech: The unrecognizable New Landscape of Tech and Culture. 
David Pogue with Yahoo Tech.

"My job is to anticipate the dots. And to think about how it will impact us and our lives."

There's always been a generation gap, but today that gap has widened. (He shows a picture of his kids and then puts alien heads on their faces). And that gap has come from the phone - which kids use for everything but talking.

Inside the iPhone -- audio, video, cameras, speakers, sensors, proximity sensors, 15 different wireless antennas. and in the iPhone 6 a barometer. And so people can write apps to exploit these circuits.

What's an app? 

Ocarina is an app that turns the phone into a musical instrument. You blow into the microphone and play the touchscreen with your fingers. And you tip it for expression. http://ocarina.smule.com

The guys sold 1.5 million copies of this app in 6 months. 

And there's even a google earth connection on this app and you can listen to songs that other people are playing all around the world. Right now.

The year the big trend: The Internet of Things. Which means ordinary household devices that are now networkable:

• Remote Video (iZon)
• Nest Thermostat

Made possible by in little sensors. 50 billion of these sensors will be embedded in things. And so now every company out there is creating their own version of Internet of Things with apps galore.

USB C -- the interchangeable power cords. One cord to rule them all. Google laptops, apple laptops, phones etc.

Even better news: Wireless charging. We won't care what cord or jack we have because things will charge through the air. It's the dawn of long range charging. It's one year away. It's an RF single that emanates from an antenna array. The frequency they use is non-penetrating so it won't actually cook your intestines. 12 devices will be able to charge at the same time from the same transmitter. They're going to be building these into refrigerators and TVs and other devices.

World 2.0 -- in world 2.0 we deal directly with each other. In the new model, we meet:

• AirBnB (they sold 13 million nights of lodging last year)
• TaskRabbit: Rent Your Time (He paid a college kid $20 to go get some cold medicine for his wife and the kid delivered it within 30 minutes. His wife thought he was a god.)
• Uber and ÜberX (these are normal people helping you out).
• Parking Panda (Instead of paying $40 to park at the airport, you pay $8 to park in someone's driveway)
• Dog Vacay (Instead of going to a kennel, your dog stays in someone's home)
• Rentoid (You rent out stuff you own)

All of this is really disruptive. The taxi drivers have had the business model kicked out from under them.

This all rose during the recession, when people needed to make and/or save money. And we're not putting the genie back into the bottle.

Wearable Tech. Hot or Not? 

Google Glass blew it -- $1,500 price tag, no record light - no one knew if you were being recorded and they were quickly banned. Google's working on a new model. But a societal resistance: "the glasshole."

Remember the Seque? They were going to change the world, and now the only people who have them are mall cops.

Fitness Trackers are catching on. And they track more than steps. There are some to track your posture, your sunlight, you heart rates, your steps, etc. Health tracking hats, bras, forks, earbuds. Any where you can put a sensor, they will do it. We'll be buying 70 million of these this year. And they're becoming more sophisticated -- medical grade analytics. 

A contact lenses with a battery and a blue tooth that will do diabetes testing...

Driverless cars

DARPA Robotics Challenge

Drones

It's not just the technology, but how it affects us. The use of email by people under 25 has dropped 65%. Everything has to be real-time like Twitter, FB messaging.

Average age on Twitter is 35. 

In the new generation, everything has to be on demand. Books, music, learning, movies.

College kids on job apps are leaving the home number blank and the email field. They just don't have them.

It's generated a new privacy discussion. Google Maps come up with traffic updates (the red, yellow, green roads) by pulling data from all the mobile phones in people's cars. Young people say, cool trade.

It's all going too fast. How are you supposed to keep up?

William Goldman: "I write every book with the same amount of thought and energy. I don't know when I'm writing them which one will be hits and which will be flops." 

80% of broadway shows turn out to be flops. 

Why are there still terrible movies?

80% of everything is pretty much crap.

You've got to keep innovating and putting stuff out there to find the 20%.

Every new things scares us. Airplanes will make the blood pool in our heads - they don't. Tractors are the work of the devil -- they're not! Cell phones will give us brain cancer - they don't!

we discard the bad techs and adopt the good ones.

"The pit is always smaller than the plum."