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In 2008, the number of devices that connected to the Internet exceeded the number of people. That number continues to rise, thanks to a growing number of connected devices and gizmos, ranging from televisions to soda machines. Folks at Cisco have put together this infographic to showcase the growth of the Internet of things.

"Virtually everywhere one looks we are in the midst of a transition for how we organize and manage information, indeed even relationships. Social networks and online communities are changing how we live and interact. NoSQL and graph databases - married to their near cousin Big Data - are changing how we organize and store information and data. Semantic technologies, backed by their ontologies and RDF data model, are showing the way for how we can connect and interoperate disparate information in ways only dreamed about a decade ago. And all of this, of course, is being built upon the infrastructure of the Internet and the Web, a global, distributed network of devices and information that is undoubtedly one of the most important technological developments in human history. There is a shared structure across all of these developments - the graph. Graphs are proving to be the new universal paradigm for how we organize and manage information. Graphs have an inherently expandable nature, and one which can also capture any existing structure. So, as we see all of the networks, connections, relationships and links - both physical and informational - grow around us, it is useful to step back a bit and contemplate the universal graph structure at the core of these developments. Understanding that we now live in the Age of the Graph means we can begin studying and using the concept of the graph itself to better analyze and manage our interconnected world. Whether we are trying to understand the physical networks of supply chains and infrastructure or the information relationships within ontologies or knowledge graphs, the various concepts underlying graphs and graph theory, themselves expressed through a rich vocabulary of terms, provide the keys for unlocking still further treasures hidden in the structure of graphs."

There is a growing demand for the ability to connect to others. It is with each other that we can make sense, and this is social. Organizations, in order to function, need to encourage social exchanges and social learning due to faster rates of business and technological changes. Social experience is adaptive by nature and a social learning mindset enables better feedback on environmental changes back to the organization.

"Collective intelligence is a growing trend that seeks to exploit the computational power of millions of users You have probably done it but maybe you didn't realise. Or maybe you did it on purpose, but it was a game. What is it? Collective intelligence, or "human computation", is a growing trend that looks to harness the wisdom of the crowd to solve problems. Today, enormous computational power is distributed among millions of users, and the internet offers a means to connect it, explains Prof Barry Smyth, professor of computer science at University College Dublin."

"There is a seismic shift underway in the digital world that within a decade will completely transform the web into an App-o-verse. Several simultaneous trends are stacking up to change how we consume and create digital content, and platform companies are positioning themselves to enable the process. What we are seeing are the early stages of what I call, "The Appification of Everything." This is not about adding more icons to your home screen, though, but about a fundamental shift in how we metabolize information and entertainment. The web as the universal storage medium is being superseded by the internet as universal flow medium. Instead of thinking about the web as a hierarchical tree of documents-a Wikipedia of Wikipedias-we need to start thinking about all of that content as an underlying service layer for application-based interfaces."

Knowledge in a networked society is different from what many of us grew up with in the pre-Internet days. While books and journal articles are useful in codifying what we have learnt, knowledge is becoming a negotiated  agreement amongst connected people. It's also better shared than kept to ourselves, where it may wither and die. Like electricity, knowledge is both particles and current, or stock and flow.

"The force driving the most radical change in organizations today is knowledge gained and shared through social media, the great amplifier of our time. Businesses can't hide from the expectations of customers and employees (the iPhone 5). Governments can't hide from the expectations of citizens (the Arab Spring). And trainers can't hide from the expectations of learners. A counterpart to information exchange through social media is the ability to collect and analyze enormous amounts of data about customers, partners, markets, and other quantifiables. Big Data, as it is called, allows companies to respond rapidly and with relevance to their constituents, and leaves them few excuses when they don't."

Call a friend in another city or a foreign country, and ask them to Google something at the same time as you. The results will be different... "The result is a "filter bubble", which he defines as "a unique universe of information for each of us", meaning that we are less likely to encounter information online that challenges our existing views or sparks serendipitous connections. "