I can talk to virtually anyone, anywhere in the world.  But what if I don't have anything useful to say?  What if I don't know how to express an idea logically so that someone else can follow my thoughts?  What if my audience doesn't have the same whiz-bang technology that I do?  What if my audience speaks and thinks differently than I do?

Regardless of how you feel about Google as a corporation, you can't deny that they have clearly communicated at least two ideas to the world:

• Good, useful tools should be made available for free
• Good, useful tools should be easy to understand and easy to use

These are two great ideas.  I just don't think they are the complete solution to any problem, particularly if we're not 100% of what the problem is.  In addition, I don't think that mass distribution of cheap, useful tools automatically guarantees success.

I come from a background of green screen ERP systems and midrange servers, so I don't actually work in the Web 2.0 world a lot.  However, I do play there (read:  not paid for what I do online) a lot.  I like new technology, even if I don't use a lot of it.  I think that it's absolutely wonderful that we can share audio, video, and images more easily that we ever could even five years ago.  Or three years ago.  Or even last year.  And thanks to companies like Google and many others, we can share all of this great stuff for free.

So what?

• Do we communicate with each other more than in the past?
• Do we communicate any more clearly and effectively than previous generations?
• Are we any better at thinking, idea generation, or creativity than we used to be?

Or does technology just allow us to be bigger, faster, and louder?

Does our technology influence us so heavily that most of our ideas are limited by that technology, as powerful and as cool as it becomes?

Recently I've come across some conversations which talk about better ways to aggregate, mix, and synthesize information of various types.  These people are more tech savvy than I am, probably more business savvy than I am, and generally speaking they are smart people.  As an example, I hear people talk about how we should take RSS feeds and do great new things with them.

Maybe we should.  After all, the tools are out there, right?

Or...  should we define the great new things first, then think about what tools could be used to solve those needs?

I work with a number of software development people who try to follow methodologies in this antiquated, green screen environment.  I've had it beaten into my head, on multiple occasions, that systems should flow from business requirements.  The business requirements do need to be translated into technical specifications and designs, but they need to address some fundamental things:

a)  What is the opportunity that we are trying to realise (or call it a business problem, if you want to remove the gloss)?

b)  Can we envision the TO BE state (where do we want to be)?

c)  What measurements can we use to determine if we have attained the TO BE state?

d)  What processes or functions would need to be added, changed, or deleted to help acheive the TO BE state?

I could go on, but I'm just mining the systems development methodology vein.

In a world where technology is created and introduced at a dizzying pace, it's very tempting to take a new tool and say, "Hey, this is cool.  Let's play with it and see what we come up with."  And, to be fair, a lot of cool things have resulted from this.  Or sometimes we take something that originally appeared to be flawed, but instead becomes indispensible (like the adhesive that was used to make Post-It notes).

However, doesn't it also make sense to identify opportunities that already exist, and then build solutions to realize those opportunties?

Experimenting with new tools is very cool and very useful and I'm not suggesting that R&D and experimentation are wrong.  Just don't forget that sometimes our time is better spent actually thinking hard about is needed first, then go looking for the tools to get the job done.  The tool shouldn't always dictate the solution.