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.