future insights

Let’s Build the Physical Web TogetherFuture Insights - June 2015

@scottjensonjenson.org

We are here because we are so excited about the Internet of things. It’s a bit like the lego movie

It’s so exciting that we’re practically running around, all singing “everything is awesome!” But if you’re not careful, you can create a monster, something that will fail spectacularly or create consumer backlash. I’m a big believer in the promise of IoT but this isn’t a problem we should take lightly.

What does it mean when we as an industry often quote or reference a 50 year old TV shows as motivation? We just don’t seem to have found a good way to discuss the value of IoT.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/05/internet-of-things/

But even the way we are talking about it is absurd. Here is a recent article about the IoT and it shows how sloppy our thinking has become. <walk through each case> It’s so clear that technology is driving the discussion. We’re getting excited because it’s possible, we’re not thinking it through.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/05/internet-of-things/

Humans aren’t “algorithmic”

We use tomorrow’s technologyto solve yesterday’s tasks

But this isn’t an isolated example, bad, ill considered scenarios are everywhere. This is my favorite one, I’m sure you’ve all see this. My calendar talks to my alarm clock and lets me sleep in an hour extra and then once I’m up, it turns on my coffee machine. I hate this scenario with the heat of 1000 suns. Why? because it has no chance of working, and even if it did, is has so little value. The only reason people quote this is because it is possible, it shows a profound lack of imagination.

We are dreaming about IoT

We are like children, excited that we’ve found a pair of wings but unsure of where to go.

The difference between a dreamer and a visionary is that the visionary has his eyes open

- Martin Luther King

The IoT is a bit like the story of the elephant and the blind men. It’s so big that it’s hard to easily say what it is.

We need to pull it apart

So we can discuss it piece by piece. It might not be as exciting but it allows us to see with our eyes open and discuss what is working and what we need to do.

Smart TV -> Smart Thermostat -> Smart pill bottles, things are getting smaller and cheaperSmart home -> Smart cars/highways -> Smart cities Networking is getting bigger and more complex

devices

Let’s call this first group devices

devices networks

And this second group networks

devices

I’d like to focus on devices, not because networks aren’t important, I’m just trying to break the problem down and focus on something specific that I have some experience in.

devices

user facingautonomous

Now lets take devices and break them up into use facing and autonomous

devices

What we’ve noticed is that Smart devices such as the Nest thermostat or the Withings smart scale are generating lots of excitement. As a general category, internet connected devices are a huge step forward in functionality and convenience.

However, each one ends up requiring their own application

There is a simple problem looming on the horizon. If there are going to be millions of these devices in our lives, and if each one requires it's own app, doesn't that mean we'll have to install millions of apps? Apps are great for the repetitive things we do every day like email or snapchat, but what about a vending machine in the airport? Do we really have to download an app for something we’ll use just once?

Of course, we won’t own millions of devices ourselves but we will surely run into dozens throughout each day. Are we going to stop and install an app for each one? When we encounter exponential growth, we mistakenly tend to think about it linearly. This keeps us from really seeing the coming problem.

What’s the problem?

But this is a hard thing to do.

Gimme an app...

@grigs

We are so in love with the idea of apps. They have been successful, it’s hard to ignore that but it’s become this unquestioned truth. We had this problem at frog design when clients demanded an app. We tried to get them to consider a web site but they weren’t ‘cool’ anymore. I wrote a blog post about this called “App Myopia” as people just didn’t want to listen to alternatives.

“Thin crust of effort”

We did a study and found out that most people don’t WANT to install apps. They will of course, but it has to be a very compelling reason. There is what we called a “thin crust of effort” around apps that must be overcome before people are willing to install the app.

This doesn’t mean apps aren’t installed, it just means that you need a LOT of marketing, a great brand, or a lot of great press to get people to install your app

I’m not the only one these articles came out recently showing the cracks are beginning to form. But remember, I’m not saying that apps are doomed, only that they aren’t the holy grail we’ve been led to believe. They come with costs, costs that as a business, you need to be aware of.

56% of the respondent retailers said apps are “not a key component of their mobile strategy to consumers.”

marketingland

77% of retailers are focusing on mobile web and rising

The Web is doing quite well….thank you very much

My point here is to say that mobile is clearly hot, but mobile web is hot too, the web is most certainly not dead. We have to loose the mentality the apps are the ONLY way forward. There is more than one tool in the tool chest.

Ray Kurzweil likes to point out that humans are terrible at understanding exponential expansion. We tend to look at two points and assume a linear curve. We are all surprised with things actually do break out.

Yahoo had this problem this back in the 90s, trying to maintain a hierarchical list of URLs for every page on the web. At some point, the paradigm just needs to change.

This is the problem with iBeacon. If you go to a shopping mall with 15 stores all using iBeacon, you'll have to install 15 separate apps. No one will put up with that.

Number of devices

App

Valu

e

The Long Tail of interaction

Native apps are great, they’ll always have a role. But if there is one things we’ve learned form the web, and even companies like Amazon, is that the internet encourages the “long tail” were use cases and value becomes smaller and more fragmented. So today, when we see a new product like the Nest thermostat, we assume was must have an app to control it. But what happens when we try smart vending machines? There are 974 main vending machine companies listed in the united states alone. How many apps will that require? Now image bus stops, or lost suitcases.

What’s also interesting is that as we move to the right, we start needing interactivity less and data more. By the time we get to my lost suitcase, all we really need is a name and a phone number. So many people argue that native apps are superior to websites, implying that alone is a reason to keep apps. But if we aren’t even offering interactivity, what are native apps buying us? The web was designed to offer data in a flexible and portable format.

Loose apps,Think small

Dog collar

Bus

Rent-a-bike

Home appliance

Industrial robot

Mall map

Each of these possible discoverable services are actually ‘just ok’, but that’s the point. The Apps ecosystem today requires you are a hit so you expect your app to solve a huge important problem. Once we loose the need for apps and open ourselves up to ephemeral interaction, we start to think small, trivial even, and explore ideas/spaces that apps would shut down.

Why can’t the web do this today?

Magic goes here

The web usually focuses on this part, the DOM, one of the most flexible and amazing rendering engines on the planet. This white box is amazing,

and getting better all the time.

C:\>But this place is BORING...

But what do we do? We slap a URL bar at the top, that thing you have to type into in order to go anywhere. What’s wrong with this picture? We

taken the most amazing rendering engine on the planet and strapped a command line UI on top of it! We have to go through a DOS prompt to

‘launch we apps’! Every other mobile app is gleefully taking advantage of the sensors in mobile phones to make amazing apps. Why can’t the

browser do that as well?

C:\>

But what do we do? We slap a URL bar at the top, that thing you have to type into in order to go anywhere. What’s wrong with this picture? We

taken the most amazing rendering engine on the planet and strapped a command line UI on top of it! We have to go through a DOS prompt to

‘launch we apps’! Every other mobile app is gleefully taking advantage of the sensors in mobile phones to make amazing apps. Why can’t the

browser do that as well?

1. Discovery

The Web needs a discovery service

2. Ranking 3. Interacting

This is NOT the internet of things, but a building block that can lead up to it. There are 3 areas to discuss: 1) Discovering the public devices nearby 2) Gathering meta data to help rank those devices and 3) Letting the user choose and interact with that web page. iBeacon does something quite different, asking for custom beacons to be installed and requiring a custom app for just those beacons to be installed. This means that to visit a mall, you’ll need to have an app installed for every store you visit. Clearly something that isn’t likely to happen.

Zipcar

The Physical web

Everything has ‘a web page’‘Instant interaction’, walk up and useNo app install/manage/deleteProximity DNS

Bridge web & physical devices

The solution is “The Physical Web” a way to bridge physical devices and the web. At it’s core, its a simple means for devices, like a zip car, to broadcast a URL so any web enabled device can detect that URL and use it. Everything gains a web page. This unlocks the super power of the web and makes instant interaction possible. You completely remove the need to manage apps and most importantly, it’s so simple and light weight that it encourages new riskers products that wouldn’t have been considered before.

How does this work? (hint: it’s NOT iBeacon!)

“https://coke.com/v/23432”




!! !

This works by using bluetooth low energy beacon to broadcast a URL (a web address) in the advertising packet, over and over. A nearby phone can then see that and offer it up to the user.

1. Simple Web

Simple devices that just want to give you more information, like a bus stop or a museum display, are the easiest as they just take you to static web page. Think of it as a super awesome QRCode that is much easier to use and can work from across the room. While extremely simple, this unlocks many interesting new products.

2. Cloud Passthrough

The second device type would be a one that already has connectivity to the internet, such as a high end vending machine. In this case, the web page can take your selection , bill you and then message the machine to drop your snack.

3. Direct Connect

javascript

There is also a web proposal coming to extend javascript to make Bluetooth LE calls so the web page could talk directly to the device you're standing in front of. That would unlock a range of inexpensive devices and even toys that wouldn't need any internet connectivity at all. This isn't yet possible, but we're close and we should be able to start experimenting with this in just a few short months.

What about tracking?

But we’d designed this so users can’t be tracked. The beacons broadcast using the advertising packet which does not connect to the phone. If 1000 people walk through a mall with 100 beacons, those beacons will have no idea. We also use a proxy server to contact the web sites so the phone is not exposed to the websites (until the user clicks on the link of course) That protects the user from both the beacons and websites. We also protect the user from us by making all of our source code open and available. We’d REALLY want other clients to be created so Google isn’t the only company doing this. This encourages an ecosystem and offers users choice so they don’t need to be locked into any companies approach.

But this is still a tiny, fledgling idea. It’s why I’m here talking to you all. This product can’t succeed if it’s only a “Google Product”, it will only succeed if the market wants it. This needs to be a grass roots effort from the entire web community.

~4000!!!!

That’s why we have a github and are giving this all away. This isn’t a Google thing, it’s a web thing. We’re building this out but needs to be part of the broader web platform.

Standard Proprietary

In a sense we’re trying to create two clouds of things. The first is a cloud of standard devices that broadcast urls the exact way. We’ve started talking to the W3C about standardizing this packet so everything broadcasts URLs in exactly the same way.

However, the devices that listen can be broad and varied, just like browsers are today. They can try different ways of ranking, compete on that difference even. There can be wild variability there, as longs as all of the devices are broadcasting the same way.

Now are these ideas utopian, even a bit naive? Absolutely. This isn’t an easy way of looking at the world, it’s full of stumbles and dead ends. It’s not enough to be open source, it has to be big and audacious, just like the original internet

10 years

our time horizon for innovation has become weeks not decades, we forget that the delta between netscape and Gmail was 10 years. It takes time for systems to build and mature.

Road idea

Truck idea

Look at this this way: FedEx couldn’t exist without a municipal road system. Great companies are built on great infrastructure, usually public infrastructure. It’s actually very simple, the world is really only split into two groups: truck ideas and road ideas.

The problem is that everyone wants to build trucks. Building roads just doesn’t seem very sexy.

Apple Samsung FacebookCisco

The other problem with truck ideas is that they they tend to build their own trucks often with their own roads! In order to maximize profit, they build an ecosystem that locks out others.

I’m not naive, I appreciate the business world is VERY competitive and if you don’t protect yourself, you’re vulnerable. But it’s such a colossal waste of energy. Maybe it’s such a dog eat dog world BECAUSE everyone is trying to play king of the mountain?

Malcom McLean

Does anyone know this guy? This is my hero. Malcom McLean was the first business man to see outside of this defensive model of capitalism. This is the guy that invented container shipping.

Truck Train Boat

Back in the 1950s you had to load and unload all sorts of different sized cargo from trucks to trains to boat. McLean created a standard container size that let you use cranes to do the unloading, it was 36x cheaper than doing it by hand. He made a mint

But you know what he did? He gave it all way. He had patents on everything but made them all royalty free. Why? For the simple reason that he realized he was working on road problem. If everyone used his system, it would create a much bigger pie. And guess what, he made even more money. The guy cashed in big time.

What would you rather have?

75% of this 25% of that

We need more communism if only to break out of our little dog eat dog world and grow a bigger pie. What would you rather have 75% of this or 25% of that?

In thinking about the future, it’s easy to be blinded the the giants of the day. The iPhone is great, it was a major step forward but to keep worshiping it, copying it’s model is just lazy. I’m not critisizing Apple, I’m criticizing *us*. We’re the ones that think app stores are the only way to go, we’re the ones that think proprietary lock in is great. Apple is great, we have to stop copying them and realize there are other ways of innovating.

physical-web.org

[email protected]

@scottjenson

jenson.org

The Physical Web is a new approach to smart device interaction. It’s not a product but an open platform. It will succeed only if *we* as a community want it to succeed. It’s a road idea, trying to allow entirely new systems to be build and grow over time in a way that isn’t controlled by any one company. Like the web, it’s trying to create a platform that can grow and change over the next 25 years.

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