# Whats next?
The short term, medium term and long term futures of the World Wide Web have been brought to my attention recently, and I really want to take a step back from any influences which come from the communities from which I am in.
I think I can see where we are going, and the technologies which are emerging seem like we will be heading in that direction. BUT I have some questions for us all to ponder while trying not to be influenced by the crowd:
- Is this direction that users really want? If not, then what do they want?
- Do developers, entrepreneurs and visionaries actually understand what users want… or is it just guess work or developed because they think it’s cool?
- Do users, developers, entrepreneurs and visionaries understand how far we actually are in our current trajectory?
- What will a user have to understand when we reach our target, and will it really be worth it?
- What about society? What is the Web doing to society (aka in real life how has society changed because of the Web (if at all)?)? How has society changed the Web since its creation?
- What about technology? How many things have failed because the Web is (seen as) “bigger and better” or “the only way to go”? Do we really want interconnected devices, are we actually writing something which could be akin to the knowledge base for the Borg?
These are very crucial questions for all those who deal with developing/evolving the Web further, and we don’t think about them very often from a non-influenced point of view do we?
Question 5 above is the one that is on the tip of my mind today, if we didn’t have the technology we do today then would we be:
- Healthier? (people will need to move about less, there would be less office jobs and more manual work)
- More intelligent? (not intelligence as in “knowledge”, but intelligence as in problem solving, life skills, adaptability… people wouldn’t use wikipedia or google to find something out, nor use any website to calculate an answer to a problem)
- More social? (real life social… many of us who “work the Web” don’t really get out much… many work from home. What happened to the office?)
- Happier? (healthier, more intelligent and more social… of course you’re going to be more happy!)
On a more negative side would we:
- not have such a broad knowledge base for our exploitation? (for example, people go on wikipedia or search google for more information on a subject… which could come from anywhere in the world)
- not have such a broad range of interests or even friends? (for example, thanks to the online communities of which I am a member I could go to various places in the world and be greeted by someone who I have never met in real life before but have met through web-based communications (and this is from a variety of interests))
One thing, which I think is very low in UK society at the moment (but something which I and many have gained from the advancement of Web Technology) is Religion and Spirituality. Since I started playing with the Web many many moons ago I wasn’t particularly interested in religion or spirituality. Thanks to the Web I have found out all kinds of things (and I’ve even been to some events) including Paganism, Greek Philosophy, Tarot, Buddhism, Yoga, Kabbalah, Rosicrucianism, Gnosticism, Sufism, Meditation, Reiki, Freemasonry and Christianity…. all of which have made me grow in spirituality and something which I probably wouldn’t have gained without the Web. However, I still feel that Religion/Spirituality is missing from the modern world, for instance:
- Less people are going to Church (or other place of worship),
- More and more people are becoming anti-religious activists (extremists who follow people like Richard Dawkins),
- More people are intolerant of other peoples beliefs/faiths (aka religious conservative/fundamentalists)
- There are less religion/spirituality programmes on the major TV channels and Radio stations
This is one area of which the Web hasn’t really had any impact on…. and I think it might be because technology has taken over so much that people are experiencing less “me time”.
Hmmmmm. I’ve digressed a little from my original topic. I ask that you please seriously think about the questions at the start of this blog post, feel free to comment if you wish to say anything, or email if you would like to talk in confidence.
Thank you,
Daniel
July 21st, 2008 at 1:44 am
Daniel,
The Web is ultimately going to materize as THE medium for discourse discovery and participation.
The Web is about enabling us to discovery our “commonality” via our expressions of “individuality” (the individual labels and monkiers we used to express our observations, percpetions, and comprhensions i.e. data, information, and knowledge respectivel).
When you have open and global discourse, you get much closer to collective intelligence and wisdom on a scale unimagined to date.
Users, Developers, and Entrepreneurs are just labels for people with different areas of interest and capability expression based on their employment context (most of the time).
All of us seek balance in our lives. A deluge of information and the ills of information overload take us away from that (note the date and time of this post; personal opportunity cost high!).
We need a productive route to constructive community. Unfortunately, this route only reaches crystalization via manifestation of opportunity costs
The Web didn’t become ubiquitous because users grokked the concepts behind HTML and Browsing. The Web simple reached critical mass (i.e. network epidemic levels) due to the manifestation of opportunity costs i.e. nobody could afford not having some kind of Web Presence.
Crystalization of the Semantic Web value prop. will follow the same path i.e. solutions that help everyone understand that they cannot ignore the virtues of Linked Data.
Linked Data exploitation is the key to productive interaction with exponential growth of data and data silos on the Web and across the Enterprise.
July 21st, 2008 at 4:12 am
“BUT I have some questions for us all to ponder while trying not to be influenced by the crowd:”. “not to be influenced”. That is loaded.
1.
Without any studies, it would be hard to tell. I would guess that the common underlying idea would be to cut down on steps that are taking to solve a task.
2.
There is always the ‘cool’ factor. Besides that, I think that the developers and visionaries are essentially after the same quest. We all want it simple. Using less cognitive load and getting things done as efficiently as possible so we can get to the bottom of what we really want.
3.
I don’t think we [all of us] really do. We have a vision but that is not the end, only a part of a larger process. That larger process is probably unknown since it is subject to be influenced among other factors in our lives (state of mind) for that specific point in time.. It will change as we move along.
4.
Worth it for sure, imho. Progress is a good thing.
5.
I think that the society and the Web (society) are feeding one another. We have tapped into another area of human communication. The obvious would be the laws, politics and economics (resources/cost) has morphed the Web into what we have now. We need to be careful on our policies to help us better both in short and long term.
The Web is impacting society in a way that it is helping us acknowledge our better way of accessing data and information. This results in faster progress since new thoughts offspring many others.
6.
This is hardest to answer. I think there are missed opportunities at every turn. It doesn’t mean that they are necessarily better then the ones we went along with. Things can always change and improve toward a direction that corresponds to the way our society functions, if we truly acknowledge to do so.
Borgs are cool. If it is so, then it is part of the regular course. We would either subscribe to it or not — at that state of mind.