A really stimulating talk - and I'm very aware of the yes but . . .dangers.

I agree with much of what James says - the lack of investment in R&D, no true commitment to innovation and the deep lack of process innovation (especially public services). I'm not sure he can carry the argument that mobile phone technology has not produced productivity improvements - but maybe not as great as we could have done. It's certainly true that many people in the public sector don't/aren't allowed to use ICT to its full potential.

He's right about developments in China and Korea - but you can't get very far with that in speaking to Government - as I know from recent personal experience - they don't see the Korean promotion of ubiquitous high speed symmetric broadband as remotely relevant to the UK scene, for example.

I also agree with his thinking on the increased use of visual components in communications. I think videoconferencing will be a hit - but not for businesses. Let's face it most business people like flying business class to New York for meetings. I think 'ordinary' people will use it - but it really needs symmetric bandwidth and a decent amount - ADSL won't cut it.

And now here's the 'Yes but . . ' moment. The issue of the 'so what'. He didn't give us the 'so what'. Either because he hasn't got it or he chose not to give it to us. And he didn't finish with a clear 'call to action'. Towards the end of his talk - it seemed to me that he was less clear in his thinking about where his analysis was leading. And there was a contrast in the clarity of the thinking earlier in the speech with, for me, the cloudier and less well-structured ending of the piece.

I enjoyed the lecture very much - the time passed very rapidly - great pictures and funny jokes. Blogging speakers in realtime is very difficult - you really have to concentrate on every word - not much background time for thinking - so I've spent quite a bit of time today thinking about this.