The Age of Context - Interview with Robert Scoble

I'm Robert Scoble, I'm a futurist at Rackspace, which is a leading cloud managed cloud company. We host all sorts of companies from TED to Oakley. And I'm here at the Cards and Payments show where I just give a keynote. I sort of made a joke on Facebook that here I can order McDonald's and have it shipped brought right to my mobile phone. I can't do that back home in the United states, even though McDonald's started in the United States. So. And that sort of is a hint that something is different here. Mobile centricity and the technology in Singapore especially is very, very high. The bandwidth is faster speed and it has faster speed down into the lower classes of society, where in the United States only certain cities have gigabit ethernet and only the rich ones. So something's different here and that's just a little taste of it. I'm very excited to be here to study what's going on in the tech world and the startup world here in Singapore. Well, because the mobile phone is so strong here, I think you're seeing a lot of services, from taxi companies to delivery companies who are using contextual technology. Certainly we're in the early days here at the conference. For instance, it's the first time they've used these new smart VCAMs. There's a little radio that spits three numbers into the air. And as you walk around the expo hall here with your mobile phone, it tells you information about the vendors that you're walking by. And that's an example of what I'm starting to see in the startup world here with mobile phones. But you're starting to see health companies come out that are using wearables and using the mobile phone to study you in a new way. A lot of interesting innovations happening here in Asia. I'm very excited to be here. In terms of growth, the largest Asian market is obviously China. And that's where you're seeing a lot of hardware companies come out of, including drone companies, right? DJI in Shenzhen. You're seeing all sorts of new mobile phone companies like Xiaomi and stuff like that coming out of China. But don't underestimate Singapore. This small little country has a lot of startups that are coming out of here and very interesting, interesting ones. It's sort of a funny question, ask me which one's going to grow bigger. You know, it's an unfair question because China has more than a billion people and has a huge internal market and has a government that's protecting it with firewalls and stuff like that. But Singapore is hitting above its weight class, as we call it in the United States. They're innovating faster here and it's a market that's very connected and very supported by the government here. And so you're going to see a lot of fun things from Singapore so far. I'm very excited. The audience was very good and the expo hall here is high tech and full of interesting innovations. The reason I wanted to come here is because payments are changing so much. When I get into an Uber, I don't hand over my credit card anymore, right? My mobile phone does the paying. Now there is a credit card involved, but I entered it once and now I don't have to hand it over to the driver, I don't have to touch anything. And so these startups are coming up with new, innovative ways to do payments. I'm starting to hear about new kinds of credit cards coming out of Europe that I want to study, that I'm seeing here. And I'm seeing new kinds of even new currencies. Right. Bitcoin continues to be a story here. I just met one guy who's using the blockchain technology that bitcoin uses to verify its value for security and for other things. So I'm seeing a lot of innovation here that has to do with payments and maybe isn't necessarily a bank, but I'm very interested in where the future is going. Always follow the money, always stay ahead of the money. If you know where the money's going to come from and there's a new company that can show you a new way to make money, that's where the future of business is going. So that's why I came here. Thank you. Thanks for having me.