Thoughts on "The Third Wave" by Steve Case

The Third Wave: an entrepreneur's vision of the future is a new book by Steve Case, scheduled for release on April 5, 2016.

I tried to get an idea what topics would be discussed in this book with a Web search, but only came up with this article from Fortune entitled The Co-Founder of AOL Forecasts the Future of Tech (A version of this article appears in the April 1, 2016 issue of Fortune with the headline Steve Case Wants Tech to Love the Government). The interviewer's question:

The sectors you say are ripe for disruption—food, hospitals, transportation, education, financial services—are pretty ­fundamental. You’re ­talking about a huge shift in the way we live in the near future.

Case goes on to say that the Internet will become more a part of our lives. I would guess this is referencing IoT with applications to wearables, nearables and the whole quantified self movement toward behavioral change to a more healthy lifestyle. He cites the need for partnerships in this effort:

For example, if you really want to revolutionize health care, it’s not just about the app; it’s also about partnering with doctors and hospitals.

I would say that the healthcare sector has traditionally been reluctant to introduce broad-based tech initiatives. What reigns are proprietary solutions in the form of data silos that can ensure monetization. I think this will be the hardest prediction to see fruition.

Case cites the need to partner with Government:

Policy will also become a bigger deal because these are regulated businesses. In many cases, actually, the government is the largest customer, so a strategy of ­ignoring government—which is pretty common now—won’t work.

This is probably most likely to occur if it hasn't already with the various open data, social entrepreneurship programs enacted by the Obama administration such as The Opportunity Project.

My own impression is that we are beginning to appreciate the beginnings of what I consider Web 3.0.

The Rise of 2-Pizza Teams (increasing signal over noise)

Just to look back, Web 1.0 was about the dot com era with clicks or eyeballs being the main focus. This bubble burst, and Web 2.0 arrived with the advent of social media where content was considered king, especially when it could be generated free of charge thanks to user-generated media. Unfortunately, as more folks became involved, it became more about attracting attention, so that trolls with exaggerated rants and opinions became the noise that tends to quash any serious discussion.

Web 3.0 will bring about the acceptance of small groups of individuals, some say 2-pizza teams, Seth Godin calls tribes, who are dedicated to solving specific problems with domain knowledge matched with data science tools and methods.

Beyond this I don't want to make predictions. Social media is embracing more push than pull these days as we see the effort to eliminate chronological timelines in Twitter and Instagram, in order to support advertising.

What becomes of Facebook and Twitter? It might be the tribes that survive the nuclear meltdown.

Social entrepreneurship & open data: hot links

What I think are the most informative links for these topics:


B Corps: The 21st Century Standard for Business

University of Ghana advances to finals of $1million Hult prize competition

It Will Take a Village To Cut Food Waste, Says Roadmap

Social Enterprise Showcase and Pitch Competition

Social Impact Lab Berlin

The Most Important Impact Trend for Social Entrepreneurs in Health

Obama’s big data project targets community improvement

Epidemico

The Police Foundation’s Public Safety Open Data Portal

The White House Police Data Initiative

Socrata

The White House: source code policy

NBA's First Deaf Player Pivots To Social Entrepreneurship

Benefit Corporations Raising Capital

Open Opportunity Data: map for Philadelphia

Data Science: hot links

This is what I'm looking at for now:

Why an MIT PhD Says Big-Data Education Is Now 'Fundamentally Important'


TOP 10 BIG DATA AND DATA SCIENCE CONFERENCES IN 2016

Where do college graduates work?

New KDnuggets Tutorials Page: Learn R, Python, Data Visualization, Data Science, and more

Introducing the Chief Data Scientist

Does Open Data Build Trust?
A story of Demond, police data, and his grandmother’s recycling bin

The Definitive Guide to Do Data Science for Good

The Data Science Industry: Who Does What (Infographic)

Data and Medicine by Code.org

Predict Winds to Come with a Climate Data Visualization Tool

Gov't Open Data: Food Deserts

This online post from the American Nutrition Assoc. cites the USDA's definition of a "food desert": "[P]arts of the country vapid of fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthful whole foods, usually found in impoverished areas. This is largely due to a lack of grocery stores, farmers’ markets, and healthy food providers."

Above is the map they provide generated from data provided by the Dept. of Agriculture, Centers for Disease Control. 

This is a very important topic that is ideally portrayed by data visualization (dataviz) in map form.

The USDA Economic Research Service provides a Food Access Research Atlas where you can:

• Create maps showing food access indicators by census tract using different measures and indicators of supermarket accessibility;
• View indicators of food access for selected subpopulations; and
• Download census-tract-level data on food access measures.

They also have created a Food Environment Atlas with the following objectives:

• to assemble statistics on food environment indicators to stimulate research on the determinants of food choices and diet quality, and
• to provide a spatial overview of a community's ability to access healthy food and its success in doing so.

 Here in Omaha, the local news station reported on the plans of the Omaha Economic Development Corp. to bring fresh produce to North Omaha by constructing a grocery store using recycled shipping containers and starting a farmer's market. 

I was able to use the Food Access Research Atlas to do a quick map of the areas considered to be a food desert in North Omaha.

With this map, the green area corresponds to low income and low access at 1 and 10 miles. (Original Food Desert measure)