Speaking:

The Real Future of Technology from Fake Steve Jobs

Will Android rule the mobile world? Can Apple possibly get any more awesome? In this talk, Newsweek Technology Editor Dan Lyons expands upon the world of his satirical Apple-centric blog to examine the way profound changes in technology continue to shape our lives, both at work and at home. With hilarious slides and highlights from his blog, and with the same scathing wit that has become his hallmark online, Lyons delivers a fresh approach to covering news from Silicon Valley, bringing the flair of The Colbert Report and The Daily Show to the staid world of business journalism. He also discusses how technology has rewritten the rules of the media business, drawing upon his own history, from the world of magazines to the furious world of Internet publishing. It’s a lively tale of disruption and survival, one that might help some companies explore new ways to manage communications in an increasingly digitized world. But, no guarantees on the redeeming value or inspiration, okay? The main idea of this speech is simply to have fun.

The So-Mo Revolution

Like Tracy and Hepburn, Bogart and Bacall, chocolate and peanut butter — some things are just meant to be together. So it is with the two hottest trends in technology, social networking and mobile computing, which are merging to create what Newsweek Technology Editor Dan Lyons calls “the so-mo revolution.” Sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ see an increasing amount of their usage coming from mobile devices like iPads and smartphones rather than desktop computers. By 2013 there will be 1 billion smartphones on the planet, roughly the number of PCs that exist today. By that year Facebook’s audience, now at 750 million members, may approach 1 billion as well. Over the next decade the technology inside a smartphone will become so inexpensive that a huge chunk of the 5 billion mobile phones on the planet will be upgraded to smartphones. We will have billions of people constantly connected to the Internet, and to each other, via smartphones and other mobile devices. The implications of this are profound — and the opportunities are huge.

Dan’s job at Newsweek gives him a unique front-row seat on the latest up-to-the minute happenings in social media and mobile computing. In this lively presentation, he shows how cutting-edge companies can navigate this complex, ever-changing new world and make the right decisions that will enable them to expand their brand presence and reach new customers. First, where should you place your bets? Which platforms matter, and which ones are fading away or will never get traction? Do you really need to be on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+? If so, how should you use each one, and what kind of audience will you find in these very different sites? How can you take advantage of Foursquare, Groupon, Quora and YouTube?

And what about the device side? Which mobile platforms are going to survive? Will Android overtake Apple? Do you need to bother with platforms like HP’s WebOS and Microsoft’s Windows Phone? Should you develop custom apps for each platform, or go with HTML5? (For that matter, what the heck is HTML5 and why should you care about it?) Whichever way you go, can you develop your mobile apps in-house, or should you hire specialists? This speech is a must-see for anyone who wants to stay on the cutting edge of social networking and mobile computing.

Cyberwar

Is your company prepared to defend itself against hacker attacks? In recent months hackers have broken into Google, Citigroup, the Pentagon, and defense contractors like L-3 Communications and Lockheed-Martin. One big heist took place at RSA Security, a company that creates security codes and keyfobs that protect other companies. RSA is the most sophisticated computer encryption company in the world. Breaking in there “was like breaking into a heavily guarded locksmith and stealing the master combination that opened every vault in every casino on the Las Vegas strip,” Businessweek says. These hackers are not bored teens, or criminals looking for credit card numbers. “These are nation-state capability actors,” says a security expert.

In the face of such threats, a top exec at RSA says our approach to cybersecurity needs to be revamped. Joel Brenner, former senior counsel at the National Security Agency, says our entire infrastructure — power plants, banks — is exposed to a “new generation of spies” who are operating remotely, via cyberspace. The next great war most likely will not be fought on a battlefield, but over fiber optic wires. China has assembled an elite squadron of commando hackers called the Blue Army. Here in the U.S. we have our own hacker commandos. These operatives are quickly becoming the new equivalent of Navy SEALs. Indeed, the “next great war” has arguably already begun.

What steps do corporations need to take? Newsweek Technology Editor Dan Lyons provides an overview of how the attack at RSA took place and offers a glimpse at the new breed of nation-state hackers who are capable of attacks that are far more complex and sophisticated than attacks of just a few years ago. Who are these hackers? What do they want? Most important: Can we stop them?

The Singularity

What happens when computers become more intelligent than humans? What happens when you can implant a quantum computer into your brain? What happens when the items on the checklist for your “designer baby” include not just eye color and hair color — but also IQ? All of those things may become reality over the next few decades, with implications that are both profound and terrifying.

A growing number of people around the world are preparing for the moment when machines become like humans, and when humans become like machines by incorporating digital technology into their bodies, a moment some call the Singularity.

Singularitarians, as they are known, believe we will embark on a new “man-machine civilization,” which they view as a kind of utopia. Others, however, take a more dystopian view. In their view, if machines can out-think humans, then machines will become the dominant form of life on earth. If that’s the case, what happens to us? “If we are lucky, they’ll treat us as pets, and if we are unlucky, they will treat us as food,” says one futurist, and he’s only half-kidding. Other scientists believe the Singularity heralds the end of the human species as we know it — that our children, or perhaps our grandchildren, may be the last creatures on this planet that any of us alive today would recognize as human.

Newsweek Technology Editor Dan Lyons takes you on a journey into the future, to the moment when the singularity takes place. He offers an overview at the technologies involved — artificial intelligence, robotics, genetic engineering, nanotechnology — and describes the recklessness with which some scientists are pursuing these technologies. Some argue that scientists should turn back, but Lyons believes this will not happen. We humans simply cannot resist the allure of new technology. There will be more technological change in the next hundred years than in the past thousand years. Whether most of us would call those changes “progress” remains to be seen.

Alan Turing, Code Breaker

The year 2012 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Alan Turing, the great British mathematician and cryptographer who helped the Allies win the Second World War by breaking the Nazi Enigma code and then, after the war, became the father of artificial intelligence. In a seminal 1950 paper Turing created the “Turing test,” by which we could determine whether a machine could really be said to be “thinking.” Turing’s idea was to have a human judge engage in conversation with a human and a computer, all three separated from one another. If the judge could not tell which one was human and which was the computer, then the machine could be considered to be thinking.

Turing was a brilliant but tragic figure. In 1952, while a professor at University of Manchester, he admitted to being a homosexual and faced criminal prosecution for “gross indecency.” Because of his conviction, Turing lost his security clearance and could not continue his work in cryptography. As a sentence he was given a choice: go to prison, or accept chemical castration by injection of female hormones. In 1954, a few weeks before his 42nd birthday, he committed suicide by taking cyanide. More than a half century later, in 2009, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown would offer an official apology for the way Turing was treated.

Turing’s work inspired generations of AI researchers. No computer yet invented has been able to pass the Turing Test. Some scientists, like David Gelernter at Yale, say no machine will ever achieve human intelligence, that Turing’s premise was flawed, and that scientists are foolish to continue trying to achieve this. Others, however, continue on the quest to reverse engineer the human brain and re-create it in silicon. One scientist, in Switzerland, believes his team will have a working artificial brain completed by 2020.

In this speech, Newsweek Technology Editor Dan Lyons tells the the story of Alan Turing, a remarkable genius and war hero whose research envisioned the modern-day computer and artificial intelligence.

Simple – What You and Your Company Can Learn from Apple

Just over a decade ago Apple was nearly out of business. Today, thanks to the visionary leadership of founder and CEO Steve Jobs, Apple has become the hottest consumer electronics company in the world, its market valuation exceeded only by Exxon-Mobil. How did Apple do this? And what can your company learn from it? Newsweek Technology Editor Dan Lyons offers a unique vantage point on this remarkable comeback story. For four years Dan penned “The Secret Diary of Jobs” – a witty, entertaining and insightful blog that became a must-read in Silicon Valley and beyond. In the persona of “Fake Steve,” Lyons produced hundreds of articles about Apple and developed a deep understanding of the company’s success. The heart of the matter is simplicity. In a culture marked by overwhelming complexity and “feature creep,” Apple succeeds by making every aspect of its business as simple as possible. In this talk, Lyons shares lessons from Apple about innovation, leadership and risk-taking; about delivering experiences, not products; about reducing clutter and increasing focus; about managing suppliers; about the intrinsic simplicity of great design, and the power of marketing; and about why being simple is, paradoxically, anything but simple. No matter what business you’re in, from banking to biotech, from real estate to retailing, your organization can learn from Apple.