It so happened that researchers and programmers at the University of Washington recently created an online game called Foldit (http://fold.it). Gamers are posed spatial puzzles and the solutions to the puzzles address protein design and protein structure prediction.
Through their solutions, the gamers “provided the crucial insights to solve the structure of a protein-sniping enzyme critical for reproduction of the AIDS virus. With help from game-players' strategies, researchers revealed the enzymes' structure within three weeks and identified targets for drugs to neutralize it” (source: Fast Company).
The researchers have been publishing the results, most recently in the September 18th journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology.
It is a profound example of computer technology becoming mature enough to get out of the way.
For most of our lives computer technology has been entirely too present. Users were forced to understand hard drives, processors, servers, disks, modems and the associated bits that made everything happen. We never really cared about these things of course; we just wanted the result – the abstraction.
It is true in business as well. Owners and leaders do not want server rooms, servers, upgrades, hardware, and the like. They also do not want hosting, which moves those headaches and expenses to a remote location. Owners want the complexity and expense to get out of the way – they want cloud-based, integrated, software.
Facebook gets out of the way, just ask your parents and grandparents who are using it to share photos and keep in touch.
Foldit gets out of the way, decades old scientific problems solved in 3 weeks.
NetSuite gets out of the way for business, integrating all the necessary functions for business owners, showing real-time integrated data from across the business, and keeping the focus on the business rather than the technology.
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