One of the fascinating things about macro economics is that they enable you to see such an interesting view of the near future. Economic policy is both a rear view mirror and a lens with which you can see possible future scenarios, and of course plan accordingly.

That is why I read Stephen Roach's essays and report on them here pretty regularly.

I am also really fascinated by what is happening in the US, since the US economy affects the rest of the world... just as the political structure in Washington does, whether the rest of the world likes it or not.

So this week Roach reports from Beijing where he has been privy to meetings withe the Chinese central banker, Chairman Ma. Here is one of the quotes from his essay that I find pretty fascinating, and also enormously relevant to the whole issue of convergence that we discuss at Perceptric every day:


And here is another snip from his essay, this time about a conversation with the Premier:

Taken together what do you get? A very calm and clearly focused China, and a very parochial America (not unsurprising, really - as oneVC I knew in Australia used to say, "You can never go wrong, investing in someone else's self interest" )

So the net net of this story seems to be: China wants to become a beacon of social strength, raising local wages, and increasing buying power, along with improving quality and consuming locally. At the same time it is going to adopt greater transparency with regard to IP laws. The big question is whether it will be able to do all this and keep America happy too.... because China is the source of America's day to day cash. If America introduces tariffs on Chinese goods (whatever they may be dressed up as rhetorically) what will that do to global politics, economics and society generally? Watch this space.

The growth in personal mobility of technology and content is growing at a furious pace.

And its not just content. Content is not king. Context is king. It is a content, applications, tools technology convergence with exponential growth that is at play.

Look at this nifty app. It enables you to change your voice - very basic at the moment, but interesting if it could be developed a bit further.....

And as I look at googleidol. Next step is that you will be able to get it on your phone. Personally I think it would be more fun to see on a phone than on a laptop....

So where does that leave search? Google inserts tags in the googleidol clips that are on its site that presumably allow you to jump ahead in the movie. But I am not sure what the purpose of those is at present other than to potentially be where an interruptive ad can be placed. Surely search has got to become a lot more sophisticated than this? I have been talking recently to Silvia Pfeiffer at CSIRO who has been working on Annodex. This is an open source platform for annotating rich content and may be a significant part of the solution.

At stake is an industry that is going to be worth US$43 Billion by 2010. Amazing....