The Network Has Become a Social Utility — Jonathan Schwartz
I wish I had better notes, but I was enthralled by Jonathan Schwartz’s (CEO, President, Sun Microsystems) keynote. It was truly, very amazing an influential. He’s a great speaker, and very motivated (and I think he’s motivated a lot of the audience).
What is Sun’s Agenda?
Similar values, cultures, and similar dysfunction’s like any family.
The Texas Advanced Computing Center – 500 teraflop “open” super-comptuing facility.
“Computational science is the third mode of discovery, complementing physical experimentation and theory” — Daniel Atkins III, Director, Office of Cyberinfrastruture, National Science Foundation
The industry has valid, legitimate scientific purpose.
Improving society as a result of that understanding. What does it take to fuel developing economies? Or to make new scientific discoveries?
In Africa, a bank is giving mobile phones, to allow folk to increase wealth! The wealth is in the network, it can’t be stolen anymore.
An open source phone? Stay tuned, Sun thinks that industry needs to be disrupted.
What does it take to connect with your friends? MySQL :)
Like electricity, like clean water… “The Network has become a Social Utility”
I want Sun to be a Great Company, and a good company. You can’t buy the community. The greater you are, the “gooder” you are. Work with communities, drive innovation, and more opportunity is created for all.
Jonathan shows a map of places where all the blue dots are where people download MySQL. Take the map away, and you’ll see a beautiful picture. Its already the majority of the planet for instance. These folk, have decided that there is a demand for open source software.
Free software is taking over the world.
Today ZFS is under a CDDL license, but rumour has it, that this will change in the future.
“The Future Will Be Defined by Free… and Freedom”
“We want to be in control of our own destiny” – all those places downloading software… Freedom matters to me, because I want access to my own stuff.
The Amazon. Comprises of 10,000 rivers. They all fuel the Amazon River. Open source, is an ecosystem of many rivers… Sun is saying we’re pro-opensource, pro-free software. Put commitment behind many communities.
Individuals are making choices… MySQL might be used even without CIOs knowing!
Secret plot? Let people download, try it, use it, and they’ll change their view of how good it is. And there’s economic benefit (for Sun).
Technorati Tags: mysql, sun, mysqluc08, mysqluc2008, jonathan schwartz, keynote
>>> It was truly, very amazing an influential.
I think his speech was good. (you should watch Steve Jobs Keynotes, pretty amazing too).
But yes, he had some good material and i like what he talked about until he spoke about Africa.
>>> In Africa, a bank is giving mobile phones, to allow folk to increase wealth! The wealth is in the network, it can’t be stolen anymore.
Do you really think that African people need cell phone to increase their wealth? Industrial countries are stealing their oil and they’re starving and all we give them are cell phones. I almost stood up in the audience this morning, i was about to tell him that if i was an African man with a family starving in Africa, I would probably feel really insulted and mad.
So yes, that 500 Tera Flops is amazing but let’s be honest it was not built for free (The $59 million award, which covers the $30 million system and four years of operating costs) (http://www.utexas.edu/features/2008/ranger/) was apparently paid thru US Tax dollar (National Science Foundation is i believe funded by government).
And the oil companies, which makes billions of profit a year, could probably build a few like these for the “good” of the planet. (maybe find a way or simulate a way to get rid of poverty in the world).
Whilst I sympathise with your feelings, there are indeed real uses for mobile communications in Africa that can help farmers:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3321167.stm
and from India, where there is one mobile in the village and it gets rented out to people who need it:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Technology/Mobile-rings-changes-for-worlds-poor/2005/04/21/1114028473872.html