By Robert Baty

June 19, 2007 -- Last week, Sun Microsystems had the honor of hosting this year's Paley Center for Media (formerly the Museum of Television & Radio) International Council meeting at its Menlo Park, CA campus. The meeting, which was held over three days on the campuses of Google, Yahoo, and Sun, was an opportunity for executives in the media, entertainment, and technology industries to discuss issues and share knowledge.

Sun's Chief Technology Officer Greg Papadopoulos led a panel discussion that explored how the development of new technologies, including the next great killer app, will depend on an open strategy. During the discussion, Papadopoulos called to tear down the walls of closed technologies.

The panelists included Vinton Cerf, chief Internet evangelist at Google; Bradley Horowitz, vice president of the Yahoo! product strategy group at Yahoo!; Ginsu Yoon, vice president of business affairs at Linden Labs, the developer of Second Life; and Dan Scheinman, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco Media Solutions Group at Cisco Systems, Inc.

Simulcast on Second Life

For the first time, the International Council meeting was simulcast on the 3-D virtual world called Second Life, an indication of how rapidly the integration of the real and virtual worlds is transforming society. As further evidence of this integration, avatars from Second Life asked questions during the Q&A.

Papadopoulos kicked off the meeting with opening remarks from each of the panelists. Vinton Cerf noted that the simulcast represented a new willingness to open the windows separating not only open and closed technologies, but also the real and virtual worlds.

Dan Scheinman observed that every disruption in technology creates a wave that is bigger than the last, and that society was in the early stages of building a strategic connection that would link networks, users, and communities.

Scheinman pointed out that networks did three things well: they distributed content, connected users, and enabled discovery. What was missing, he observed, was a way for content to find the user, instead of users having to search for content.

This prompted Papadopoulos to wonder whether search engines were a legacy application. Indeed, as the discussion progressed, it seemed as if reversing the way users connected with content could be the next killer app, one that would create new links between content-driven communities and media companies and advertisers.

Communities of Content

During the Q&A, audience members returned to the concept of content finding the user, and asked what would be required to make that possible. Panelists noted that social media would be critical in terms of building communities, just as in the real world.

Yoon pointed out that in order for content to find the user, Internet services needed to know as much as possible about the user. The more they knew, Yoon said, the more content they could provide.

But that, the panelists agreed, required more trust and willingness on the part of users to share information about themselves and their interests.

And that in turn raised concerns about privacy and the use of personal information. Horowitz noted that media companies needed to do a better job of educating users about what data was being collected and why. It was a real world challenge, Horowitz noted, one that was based on full and honest disclosure and protecting the user. Trust, he warned, took years to build and could evaporate in a day.

Papadopoulos agreed, saying that media and technology companies need to trust their users and never do anything to betray that trust.

Building a Second Life

Pointing to the Second Life simulcast on the plasma screen next to the panelists, Ginsu Yoon, of Linden Labs, which developed Second Life, remarked that his company didn't create the virtual world the audience was watching.

Linden Labs provided the infrastructure that would enable users to build their own world, Yoon said. Users did the rest. He noted that Linden Labs wasn't trying to create the future – they were using next-generation hardware and software to develop an open platform that would make an immersive, participatory world possible.

In an example of how the virtual world can aid the real world, Yoon described the educational possibilities of creating virtual labs in Second Life that would use virtual equipment and mirror real-world labs.

This open approach to technology led Papadopoulos to paraphrase Sun co-founder Bill Joy, who, he said, once observed that innovation happens elsewhere, and that most of the smart people work for other companies.

How then, asked Papadopoulos, do you get these people to add value to your platforms and technologies? How do you get people involved? The answer, he said, as demonstrated by Second Life, is that you have to let the barriers down, let people participate, and give them access to your platforms.

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