{"id":7232,"date":"2008-11-02T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-02T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/?p=7232"},"modified":"2024-09-03T12:10:00","modified_gmt":"2024-09-03T12:10:00","slug":"tim-oreilly-instrumenting-the-world-archive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/2008\/11\/02\/tim-oreilly-instrumenting-the-world-archive\/","title":{"rendered":"Tim O\u2019Reilly: \u201cInstrumenting the World\u201d (archive)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Archive of http:\/\/www.ugotrade.com\/2008\/11\/02\/tim-oreilly-instrumenting-the-world\/<\/a>
(in case Tish’s site vanishes)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim O\u2019Reilly: \u201cInstrumenting the World\u201d<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Sun, Nov 2, 2008<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tim O\u2019Reilly has outlined some of the world\u2019s big problems in his talks, and urged technologists to \u201cwork on stuff that matters<\/a>.\u201d I was one of O\u2019Reilly\u2019s listeners at the Web 2.0 Expo in NYC (see my post here<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, I found out at the Head Conference<\/a> in London, recently, that O\u2019Reilly is doing more than just talking about solving the world\u2019s problems. The O\u2019Reilly VC company is investing in technologies that tackle these big problems, for example, a very interesting startup, AMEE.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AMEE<\/a> is a new company with a VERY big, world changing idea \u2013 \u201cto create a neutral technology platform to aggregate all the energy consumption data in world \u201d \u2013 \u201cto be the world\u2019s energy meter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was fortunate, when I was in London, to get an opportunity to chat with Tim O\u2019Reilly about AMEE, Web 2.0, and the role of virtual worlds in positive global development. Also, I met the CEO of AMEE, Gavin Starks<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are still, just, in the pre \u201cInternet of Things\u201d<\/a> era. But, soon, as Bruce Sterling puts it, we will be able to \u201cGoogle our shoes\u201d or find out which super market shelves are out of sandwiches at any particular point in time! But for now, it can still be very hard to find a sandwich, even in central London. So, I had plenty of time to talk to Tim O\u2019Reilly whilst searching for a hand held bite to eat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We journeyed past several sandwichless restaurants (Tim picked up the Financial Times under his arm in the picture above in one of them), and super markets with shelves stripped bare except for some end of the day sushi (it looked scary so we passed on that).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, McDonalds came through for us with the sandwich in the top left corner of the photo above. The full interview is later in this post<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, more about AMEE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim O\u2019Reilly says he doesn’t like predicting the future. But the future comes to Tim O\u2019Reilly in very powerful ways. And AMEE asks us to play a new proactive role in our own future. AMEE\u2019s call to action is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf all the energy data in the world were accessible, what would you build?\u201d<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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AMEE<\/a>, to me, is a quintessential example of an effort to harness the key paradigm shifts of Web 2.0 (see O\u2019Reilly, \u201cWhat is Web 2.0?<\/a>\u201c) to tackle some of the world\u2019s most pressing problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AMEE\u2019s mission is to be a neutral technology platform, using open source and standards, and an architecture of participation, to address the need to standardize measurement, encourage collaborative development, and create a market place for energy data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AMEE\u2019s goal is to enable us to understand energy consumption from the level of the individual to the scale of whole countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This would address the need O\u2019Reilly notes here<\/a> his son-in-law Saul Griffith<\/a> argued at Emerging Technology Conference<\/a> earlier this year: \u201cto pick a target CO2 concentration and work backwards to get to an energy policy<\/a>, rather than guessing at an energy policy with fingers crossed, hoping for a climate outcome that is tolerable.\u201d AMEE is also involved in Saul\u2019s Wattzon<\/a> initiative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gavin Starks, CEO, AMEE, (pictured above standing under the Head Conference banner \u2013 a recording of his talk is here<\/a>), explained:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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AMEE\u2019s vision is to aggregate all the energy data on Earth. By energy I include electricity, gas and all types of fuel, water, waste, you name it: everything we do is energy consumption, which means really building towards our sustainability footprint rather than just our carbon footprint. The initial thing we\u2019ve focused on is Carbon and CO2, because that’s the most pressing issue we have to face: but it’s quite a thin layer on top of the whole sustainability question.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

AMEE is not building the front-end applications to harness this energy data. Gavin noted:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We’re aggregating all the standards. This is a massively complex area, so we\u2019ve got a science team whose job is to harvest all the scientific research and methodologies. That’s not something developers tend to want to go anywhere near: it unpacks itself into enormous amounts of complexity very quickly (e.g. building methodologies that have 700 data points). Our Chief Scientific Officer, Dr Andrew Conway, is ex-NASA and has worked on massive scientific data analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We aggregate government standards and other international standards, so that you know when you’re integrating with us, that you’re working to those standards. But much more than that we actually publish those standards on an open Wiki (the Wiki and the API actually talk to each other). As these standards emerge and evolve, we\u2019ll be tracking them, ensuring that we are up to date, and granularity is added as needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were very fortunate that one of our first clients was Defra which UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Defra is currently restructuring into DEC \u2013 the Department for Energy and Climate Change. So in the UK they’re actually fusing Energy and Climate Change into a single government department. I think this is quite remarkable: a giant step forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were contracted by them because they were building a national campaign to raise the awareness of every citizen’s personal and household footprint, and they were looking for an Open Source solution \u2013 which AMEE is. Defra\/DEC now use AMEE for two purposes: they make their standards available through the AMEE platform, so that everybody else can use them, and as the back-end solution to their national campaign,<\/a> “Act on CO2<\/a>“.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AMEE is SaaS \u2013 a web-service API \u2013 we’re not trying to compete with anyone on the front-end development and delivery. Because we aggregate two moving targets: standards and consumption, we enable those integrated with us to be current at all times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Who Owns the Data?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

But, if AMEE hopes to harness global network effects as a neutral aggregator of energy consumption data from individuals, businesses, and governments, one of the key questions that AMEE must answer (also a key question for Web 2.0 in general) is: Who owns the data? I have delved into this question before on Ugotrade. See David Levine\u2019s conversation with Eben Moglen on privacy here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gavin told me that this is a question AMEE has given a lot of thought to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How AMEE answers this question, Who owns the data?, will probably determine the success of their mission as an ethical endeavor, and their ability to scale and leverage the network effects of the internet as a platform while still allowing \u201d a very granular level of energy activity to be tracked.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gavin explained where AMEE is going re their approach to this issue. And, how this relates to AMEE\u2019s business model \u2013 software as a service (SaaS).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the best way to approach this, from both a commercial perspective and an ethical perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’re in a position where we’re aggregating vast amounts of personal and business information, on an ongoing basis. If we were to integrate with your credit cards, your smart meter, your supermarket, and your vehicles: we actually know everything about your life. Aside from the Data Protection issues we felt, “How could we protect everybody around \u2018excessive\u2019 exploitation of that data and ensure the user has long-term control?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the saying goes, “we don’t know what we don’t know”: when it comes to predicting what our privacy issues will be, and as the data around our physical lives becomes digitally available, we wanted to err on the side of caution. Danny O’Brien<\/a>, the EFF<\/a> and MySociety<\/a> have certainly helped to shape our thinking in this respect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So if you’re a Google user and you go into the Google and you kick off a calculation, all your answers to the questions are stored in AMEE \u2013 but we don’t know who you are. We’ve got an anonymous key, Google’s got the anonymous key. Google will have your user name and so on and so forth. In AMEE we’ve got the aggregate of the responses to the questions. It’s up to Google’s Privacy Policy to determine what they and their user’s can do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, this doesn’t preclude us from enabling data-portability on behalf of the user. The anonymous key is not dissimilar to an OpenID, but applied to a specific data set. We are heading towards allowing you to control your data’s portability, as an individual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s a fragile space. We want to give you the opportunity to glue together your AMEE IDs with your OpenID, or whatever login you choose, so that you’re in control. We aim to enable this to be both cloud and edge-based, which while fragile, is in the interest of the user. The more value we can provide, we believe, the stronger the value of our proposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, because were dealing with a range of different massive organizations: imagine credit card companies sharing data with energy companies sharing data with petrol companies, sharing data with airlines etc. That’s a massive challenge from a business and political perspective \u2013 almost impossible to navigate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can enable people to collaborate, by making it opt-in all the way through the chain. We don’t undermine peoples existing databases: we can actually add value to them, or we aim to add value to them. We think this has got a huge amount of potential to stimulate new business for our clients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s very \u201cweb\u201d in its execution: we are part of an ecosystem. Part of our imperative is to be commercially enabling to everybody else. If we’re not being commercially enabling to other people, we’re not going to get the kind of scale of change that we need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was another design feature. We felt, “how could we create something which other people could build businesses or platforms on top of” And, how could that scale incredibly quickly? If we’d gone beyond our boundaries as an API, we would have been competing with people we want to work with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While many services have taken similar strategic approaches, most seem to start with a form of lock-in, or evolve quickly to the point of lock-in, which satisfies a current trend in their valuations. We believe this trend will change and adapt to a more \u201cprivacy-based\u201d intelligence, which has substantial value.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim O\u2019Reilly in The Magic Circle<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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The motto of The Magic Circle<\/a> where the Head Conference was held, \u201cIndocilis Privata Loqui,\u201d can be roughly translated as \u201cnot apt to disclose secrets.\u201d One of the wonderful displays of memorabila there was Robert Houdin\u2019s Mystery Clock<\/a> (picture below). Luckily, for me, I was was treated to a full explanation of the \u201cMystery Clock\u201d by another attendee during the Head Conference cocktail party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Tim O\u2019Reilly pointed out, in his interview with Aral Balkan<\/a>, he felt it was a privilege to be talking in this theater and center of magic. Capturing the magic, spreading the magic, and sharing the magic is at the heart of what he has spent his career doing. He explained:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I guess this is kind of a root idea for O\u2019Reilly\u2026\u2026 When I look back on my career\u2026.What did we really do? Find cool people who were doing cool shit. They didn\u2019t really need any help from us. But then there were a bunch of people who were saying, \u201cHow did they do that\u201d? Those are the people we help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We find the people who are doing what appears to be magic. The Arthur C. Clarke kind of magic you know. We document \u2013 we teach people how to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is such a great privilege to be here in a theater devoted to magic \u2013 The Magic Circle. This is really what we try to do. We try to capture the magic, spread the magic, share it with other people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Interview With Tim O\u2019Reilly<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Tish Shute:<\/strong> I was interested in your comment on Chris Brogan\u2019s blog<\/a> post the other day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim O\u2019Reilly:<\/strong> Actually it wasn\u2019t Chris Brogan\u2019s post. <\/a>Dennis Howlett<\/a> was a guest blogger. I was reacting to him saying there is nothing new in Web 2.0. My reaction was: \u201cWell gosh it\u2019s very easy to make a straw man out of Web 2.0 and say, \u2018What\u2019s new?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Howlett was specifically reacting to the Web 2.0 start ups that are superficial and not really what the trend is all about. For me, Web 2.0 is about the internet becoming a platform. Does he think that is over?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, it is about understanding that the rules of business change when the internet is a platform. I think a lot of people do that with Web 2.0 [make it a straw man].<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They don\u2019t like the term Web 2.0 and they attach ideas to it that reflect the most superficial elements. And then, they say these aren\u2019t interesting. And, what he was saying was that there is a lot of superficial social media stuff \u2013 consumer apps, and what really matters is what will bring ROI to business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I just said that he is totally missing the point because learning how to use the network as a platform matters very much to business. The same rules that apply to everyone else apply to businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, for example, I have made the point in my talk in New York, just a few months ago, that in many ways you can think of Walmart as a Web 2.0 company. They are infused with IP \u2013 they are taking the data that the users give them by buying things and making themselves a more responsive organization by using that data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is the heart of Web 2.0 in the enterprise. Not, do they use social media or not, or the social media buzz words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tish Shute:<\/strong> I am going to do an interview with Gavin Starks, CEO of AMEE. Could you tell me about your role in this project?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim O\u2019Reilly: <\/strong>My role is as an investor. Our venture firm, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures<\/a>, has just finished closing on investment in AMEE. We think global warming is a really important issue to come to grips with. And, a big part of it is actually keeping track of all the carbon we\u2019re emitting. AMEE helps with that problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tish Shute:<\/strong> What is the potential, now we are beginning to break virtual world technologies down into basic open source building blocks, to create useful mashups with sensor technology, Web 2.0 and Virtual Worlds? Could Virtual Worlds play a key role in this work of instrumenting the world?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim O\u2019Reilly:<\/strong> First of all, I don\u2019t think that Virtual Worlds in the Second Life style will have this role \u2026while I like the concept of Second Life, in that we have a Second Life in a virtual world, I am not sure that 3D avatars are [the way to go]\u2026. at least they are certainly not my Second Life. My Second Life is in other types of media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, when I look at this idea of instrumenting the world, one of the things that is very, very clear is that we are turning all the millions of consumer cameras into sensors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, Microsoft\u2019s Photosynth demonstrates how these consumer sensors can be used to build 3D models. We are starting to build a 3D representation of the real world, not a separate virtual world. And, we are all going to be part of that world. So I think that the real Second Life will be \u2026\u2026\u2026..well I think the first layer is going to be\u2026.to get the 3D models of the world as it is, and then we will have doorways into additional rooms and additional spaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s when its going to take off because people are going to get used to it through navigating the real physical world with maps \u2013 with 3D imagery of buildings and spaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, another piece of this\u2026 I talked recently with Carl Bass, CEO of Autodesk\u2026\u2026and he was talking about how much even the Autodesk workflow is shifting to scanning things first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was describing how they have built this new demo center in an old building. The first thing they did was photographs and measure it exactly. Then they go and make stuff that fits in the exact space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, he was talking about how in his own hobbyist work, he found this shark\u2019s jaw and he loved the curve of it. So he scanned it and made it into the arms of a chair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tish Shute:<\/strong> I think the two important pieces that might come out of virtual worlds technology are the real time interactions where people can view the same application or context as and when you do, and the rapid prototyping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim O\u2019Reilly:<\/strong> Yes rapid prototyping, no question. But, as I said, the idea of moving an avatar around isn\u2019t very compelling to be quite honest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tish Shute:<\/strong> But the web doesn\u2019t do real time interaction very well does it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim O\u2019Reilly:<\/strong> Well Twitter is doing a pretty good job!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tish Shute:<\/strong> Yes I love Twitter. But, in terms of if you want to get a 10,000 foot view and gather around and interact with data with other people\u2026..what about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim O\u2019Reilly:<\/strong> Well that\u2019s true. I am using that example of the Squeak based virtual world that Fidelity is using. And, that is exactly what they are using it for \u2013 business interaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tish Shute:<\/strong> What about the role Virtual Worlds might play, for example, in instrumenting the world through facilities management?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim O\u2019Reilly:<\/strong> Yes, SAP did a very interesting project on property management \u2013 and that is interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tish Shute:<\/strong> Yes, on my way back to New York City tomorrow, I am going to stop off in Zurich and visit Oliver Goh who worked with Denis Browne, SAP, on that project. In fact you showed a picture of Oliver\u2019s Goh\u2019s avatar demoing the virtual counterpart to his instrumented Playmobile house in Second Life in your post, \u201cSAP as a Web 2.0 Company?\u201d<\/a> (see the picture below).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim O\u2019Reilly:<\/strong> I make no attempt at predicting the future. So you could well be right that Virtual Worlds will be a very powerful tool. But, I think with the pace that other technologies are progressing, we will get there with photorealism and video, etc. I think the fundamental problem in most virtual world stuff is the idea of the avatar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tish Shute:<\/strong> Why do you say that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim O\u2019Reilly:<\/strong> Well just imagine if when interacting with people in the real world you had to look at yourself interacting with someone else. First person point of view is our fundamental experience. And, you are being forced to see yourself in the third person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tish Shute:<\/strong> I have always been more interested in avataring the world than in my avatar identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim O\u2019Reilly:<\/strong> There is something very interesting in having an avatar that you don\u2019t ever see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[At this point there were less than ten minutes before Tim’s interview for the Head Conference, so it was time to concentrate on eating!]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Archive of http:\/\/www.ugotrade.com\/2008\/11\/02\/tim-oreilly-instrumenting-the-world\/ (in case Tish’s site vanishes) Tim O\u2019Reilly: \u201cInstrumenting the World\u201d Sun, Nov 2, 2008 Tim O\u2019Reilly has outlined some of the world\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,35,29,21,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-culture","category-data","category-energy","category-startups"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pfJFK3-1SE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7232"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7239,"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7232\/revisions\/7239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}