The Long Tail of Academic Technologies

This post has been inspired by a lot of different sources and event. As some of you know, I'm the Sakai Project Leader at my higher education institution. And as most of you know, I'm a huge social media and web 2.0 junkie.

But something has started to bug me a while ago. It seems to me that as time goes by and that we become more engaged with web 2.0 technologies in our everyday lives, more and more workers are shifting their attention away from centrally supported IT systems to really take advantage of free web services. And who can blame them, I do exactly the same thing myself:

• I use Evernote for all my meetings and to dos.
• I use Dropbox to keep current files at hand.
• I use Diigo and Delicious for my bookmarks.
• I publish blog posts here, in addition to my professional blog that I just started a couple of months ago.
• I publish pics on Flickr and videos on Youtube.
• And many more...

Numerous studies show that social media is here to stay and make people more productive. See The Cost of Social Media Phobia and Millennials will make online sharing in networks a lifelong habit.

There is most certainly some good and some bad in this, as described by Michael Zimmer and Bruce Maas in their Educause Live Webinar called "What Do Newer Generation Faculty Want from IT Services?" But good or bad, the shift is happening, and how central IT units will react will determine if workers will continue to see us as problem solvers instead of red tape addicts.

My Understanding of What's Happening

I think that the Long Tail model, as made popular by Chris Anderson, is a good way to visualize my take on this. First, here's a very loose representation of what I believe are the most commonly encountered technologies in higher education institutions.



Now, traditionally, central IT has supported the most commonly used technologies, which is the right thing to do.



As more technologies become available, and as computing power and bandwidth become better and cheaper thanks to Moore's Law, some very common technologies are becoming very common.



Under the new digital economy, some vital services have become commodities, i.e. they can be outsourced for a fraction of the cost of supporting them internally. It's happening right now with email (e.i., Microsoft Live, Google Apps), and there is no reason to think it's not going to happen to other technologies as well. The newly liberated central IT time can be allocated at supporting technologies that have some potential for widespread adoption further down the tail.

George Siemens, in his excellent post called "Well Played, Blackboard", explains how this company's survival is down the tail. By acquiring Elluminate and Wimba, they have gained access to a niche market that still has potential for growth, as the traditional LMS features are becoming more of a commodity.

What Does This Means?

I think that what this means is that higher education institutions will have to revisit their old ways of supporting technologies to figure out what is obsolete and find new ways to leverage internal resources. Educators are becoming more web-savvy and will drift their own way if we can't offer something that has value to support academic work and make our institutions special.

This can also be applied at a macro-level, as discussed during my session at the Sakai conference in Denver last June. The Sakai community has to focus on what adds value to the institution, and integrate with emerging technologies instead of trying to compete, because that's just an ever losing battle.

From Smartphone to Smart Device, Please Steal These Ideas!

Back at Thanksgiving, I bought a smartphone to replace my dino-phone. Since then, I realized how amazing it is to have all of that computing power in my pocket, and after attending the ELI Spring Focus Session webinar last week, it reinforced my belief that smartphones are going to rule the world in a couple of years. I think the first reason is because of their price.

Being relatively cheap computing devices, people who can't affort a real laptop will still feel the need to get a cell phone. It's cheaper, and everyone needs to be connected now. Thanks to Moore's law, powerful devices will become relatively cheaper every year, and the wireless carriers will (hopefully) come up with affordable data plans.

Figure 1 below is your typical modern smartphone (pick yours: iPhone, Blackberry, Android).



Now, imagine what would happen if you could actually use the computing power of your smartphone with better more ergonomic environments. Figure 2 below shows how a smartphone could be dropped on a powermat to be recharged and connect automatically to the desktop "dumb shell" (I have seen this concept before on blog posts, will try to find the reference), an inexpensive set of peripherals that would kick in as soon as you dropped the phone on the mat via the magic of BlueTooth or something. All of a sudden, you have a decent work environment that can be replicated everywhere you work the most: at home, at the office, at airports, in an hotel room, etc. So now what do we have? A decent workplace experience when working for real, and a portable convenient experience the rest of the time.



Now that the desktop has been sent to the landfill (or wherever you're supposed to send an old computer...), what about my wallet? Figure 3 will take care of this. Based on the principle of the Bump iPhone and Droid apps, you could simply bump you phone on the cash register at your favorite fancy coffee place to complete a transaction. In addition to the convenience of paying electronically the way you want (debit, credit, some sort of limited cash amount, recharged regularly like an EZ-Pass, etc.), this would allow the coffee shop to go paperless by transmitting your receipt to your phone, would could then relay it to your banking software for your records. Sweet, eh?



A little more far-fetched is the idea of a dumb laptop, a portable processor-free, cheap, and light portable workstation. See figure 4.



An then, there is the ultimate social media junkie couch potato's dream: the dumb living room (figure 5). By simply slipping your smartphome in a pouch next to the recliner, your whole living room becomes your computer and smartphone. Someone calls? Press "Answer" on your TV remote and the microphone hanging from the ceiling will put you in communication.



So, Nokia, Motorola, HTC, (not Apple), please make my day and steal these ideas. All I ask for is my name in fine print somewhere. Deliver us from our laptops!!!