Daniel’s Blog

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:

1. Is this direction that users really want? If not, then what do they want?
2. Do developers, entrepreneurs and visionaries actually understand what users want… or is it just guess work or developed because they think it’s cool?
3. Do users, developers, entrepreneurs and visionaries understand how far we actually are in our current trajectory?
4. What will a user have to understand when we reach our target, and will it really be worth it?
5. 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?
6. 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