Nova Spivack - My Public Twine

 

From "World Wide Web" to "Web Wide World" -- The Web Breaks Out of its Petri Dish

Note added by Nova Spivack on 09/18/2008
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I have noticed an interesting and important trend of late. The Web is starting to spread outside of what we think of as "the Web" and into "the World." This trend is exemplified by many data points. For example:

  • The Web on mobile devices like the iPhone. Finally it's really usable on a phone. Now it goes everywhere with us. Soon we will track our own paths on our phones as we move around, creating a virtual map of our favorite places and routes.
  • Location aware applications and services, such as Google Maps Mobile. They link physical places to virtual places on the Web.
  • The Web in cars. Dash's auto navigation units are already Web-enabled. All the other ones will be within a few years.
  • Next-generation Wi-Fi digital cameras are wifi-enabled, linking directly to camera GPS and to photo sharing and storage services. Will cloud-centric wireless cameras with zero local storage come next?
  • Web picture frames such as Ceiva bring the Web into your grandma's livingroom.
  • The Web in restaurants and stores. Your server gets your reservation on the Web from OpenTable. In-store kiosks connect to the Web to help you shop, or to bring up your online account and shopping cart.
  • The Web in your garden. GardenGro's sensor connects your garden to the Web, in order to figure out what to plant and how to cultivate it in your actual location.
  • Everything becomes trackable with RFID. Physical objects have virtual locations.
  • Sensors are connecting to the Web and popping up everywhere. For example here.
  • Plastic Logic's portable plastic reading device. The pad of paper, version 2.0.
  • The beginnings of an Internet of Things -- where every thing has an address on the Web.
  • The rise of Lifestreaming, in which everything (or much of what) one does is captured to the Web and even broadcast.
  • Progress on Augmented Reality -- instead of the physical world going into virtual worlds, the virtual world is going to flow into the physical world.

These are just a few data points. There are many many more. The trendline is clear to me.

Things are not going to turn out the way we thought. Instead of everything going digital -- a future in which we all live as avatars in cyberspace -- The digital world is going to invade the physical world. We already are the avatars and the physical world is becoming cyberspace. The idea that cyberspace is some other place is going to dissolve because everything will be part of the Web. The digital world is going physical.

When this happens -- and it will happen soon, perhaps within 20 years or less -- the notion of "the Web" will become just a quaint, antique concept from the early days when the Web still lived in a box. Nobody will think about "going on the Web" or "going online" because they will never NOT be on the Web, they will always be online.

Think about that. A world in which every physical object, everything we do, and eventually perhaps our every thought and action is recorded, augmented, and possibly shared. What will the world be like when it's all connected? When all our bodies and brains are connected together -- when even our physical spaces, furniture, products, tools, and even our natural environments, are all online? Beyond just a Global Brain, we are really building a Global Body.

The World is becoming the Web. The "Web Wide World" is coming and is going to be a big theme of the next 20 years.



Comments

by olivierertzscheid 2 months ago
Hello,
Just to mention a text pointing the same kind of evolution as yours, from a World Wide Web to a World Life Web.
http://affordance.typepad.com/mon_weblog/2008/02/welcome-to-the.html
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by rpfiii 2 months ago
Very interesting text.

I am not a document. However, the trail I leave as I trample through the wilderness of the online jungle may become one. It is like footsteps in the sand. It's very easy to see where I've been and where I've come from, but much more difficult to determine where I may be going simply by reading this trail. When the web can extrapolate from the direction I've been taking, and get to the next destination before me, that is when convergence will take place.
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by wildcat 2 months ago
Nova:" Things are not going to turn out the way we thought. Instead of everything going digital -- a future in which we all live as avatars in cyberspace -- The digital world is going to invade the physical world. We already are the avatars and the physical world is becoming cyberspace. The idea that cyberspace is some other place is going to dissolve because everything will be part of the Web."

Brightly put, however, I think that the term we should use is not "instead" but 'simultaneous convergence' in both directions. there is no doubt that the world is heading into a physical space that is augmented and hyperconnected, and yes eventually every physical object will become a smart interrelated and semantically correlated artifact of our civilization, and yes i agree that the noosphere is finally emerging. having said that, I believe that some will desire to continue the progress of online life, possibly culminating in some form or other of mind upload, when the technology will be available.
the new global body which you describe, is good news, for by hyperconnectivity we exemplify our empathic nature, and yet (and maybe because of that) we need allow the space for all forms of human cognition to take place, hence whilst it is true that the digital invades the physical, it is also true that physical invades the digital.
we are building a global mind, and now is the time to tackle the really hard questions: Identity, consciousness, evolution, empathy (and many many others).

We may also desire to remember that the Internet evolution magazine reports:" TechCrunch50 conference, startup Imindi, which offers a service involving the mapping of thoughts and associations in a database for use in social networking, received a hostile welcome from Silicon Valley. This does not mean that the Imindi service lacks innovation. On the contrary, Imindi might just be too novel for many people .
The Imindi (http://imindi.com/) founders have challenged the world to think of artificial intelligence not as making computers smarter because of human beings, but as making humans smarter because of computers. "
we may need come up with a more integrated vision, to allow the full blown emergence of a conscious world to come forth and shine.

thanks for an inspiring note
W.
ps. thank you Olivier, the paper you linked to deals with some very serious questions
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by Yihong Ding 2 months ago
thank you for reading and mentioning my post, wild.

I very much agree to your comment. Identity, consciousness, and evolution have become critical issues. The next breakthrough (i.e. lifting the Web up to another stage beyond Web 2.0) must be some significant innovation on these fields (or at least one of these fields).

Yihong
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by Mark Szpakowski 2 months ago
Indeed - the noosphere does not replace the other *spheres (biosphere, atmosphere, geosphere), or live in isolation from them, but layers over them, and penetrates and permeates them in distributed attention. Webcelium....
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by wildcat 2 months ago
hence my polytopia project
(Webcelium.. like the sound of it..Latin )
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by Yihong Ding 2 months ago
Nova,

thank you for the note. I like it and it is well written. The Web is extending itself gradually out of a network of computers, but to a more and more sophisticated network.

It is quite a coincidence. After my article of "a new take of internet-base AI", I am writing another article for Internet Evolution discussing the similar issue you have shared in this note. I would like to see how you may think of it after it is released.

Anyway, thank you again. As usual, you often bring us the most advanced thinking about the progress of World Wide Web.

Yihong
by Alvis Brigis 8 weeks ago
Some systems context for Nova's observations: http://memebox.com/futureblogger/show/915-nova-spivack-s-web-as-world-observation-leads-us-further-down-the-rabbit-hole

BTW, I am a Twine noob and have no idea how to track-back to threads in here. Do I just add twine wads? Help! :)
by Paul Roberts 8 weeks ago
This is my first comment since joining Twine last week. Can I say I'm happy to be here!

Nova, your Web Wide World is similar conceptually to 'pervasive data', 'ubiquitous communications' and 'ambient intelligence' - in short, this trend has been coming for some time. Your value-add is to thread recent developments and provide some clarity over what the concepts mean in practice - excellent for those that need actual experience of something new before they can understand it.

I agree with the trend that you outlined but I can't help but feel there is a flip-side, and it goes to the digital divide. I feel attracted to the Web Wide World - bring it on! But to participate and gain socially and economically in the digital world presupposes having the literacies to do and valuing openness and transparency. Differences is skills and capacities will create new social and economic divides. Some will be more digital than others.

Institutions value secrecy, businesses compete aggressively and there is always a war on somewhere.
The web is a social phenomenon more than anything else, but what about those who would rather be alone - or at least offline some of the time - and those that demand secrecy?
by Alvis Brigis 8 weeks ago
Good points Paul.

I agree that along with the new era there will develop a new divide. At the same time,increasingly smart software and knowledge networks will push to make participation super easy and automatic. It will force us to reciprocally develop the skills to maintain privacy. You will really need to know what you're doing, or trust a disinformation / secrecy service, in order to avoid "assimilation". Thus, a more complex info immune system to quantification will be forced to rapidly evolve.
by Paul Roberts 8 weeks ago
I think you are right about developments over time to make participation easy but the issues are cultural and social too, not just skilled base. I'm referring to a willingness to interact with others online as opposed to traditional social interaction.

I agree with you about privacy skills too. Add to that e-security skills.
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by wildcat 7 weeks ago
There is no doubt that participation in an hyperconnected world is problematic in more ways than one, not least of which are concepts that are transported from traditional modes and contexts into the web. for an exploratory discussion of trust and friendship in hyperconnectivity, see this twine: http://www.twine.com/twine/11h43rww7-2xq/friendship-in-hyperconnectivity
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by François Dongier 7 weeks ago
Here's my view of Nova's post (feel free to modify/version this mindmap)

http://www.mindmeister.com/maps/show_public/10432786
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by rpfiii 7 weeks ago
Francois--that's absolutely facinating! And very well thought out. Where would you place such things as musical taste & mp3 collections, and for that matter, all the STUFF we accumulate through our life--movies, books, household goods, etc.?

And my wife and I were just talking about this one tonite at dinner--pantry, refrigerator, recipe book, calendar schedule, all communicating together so when I walk in the door at night, I have a potential list of acceptable recipes on my kitchen monitor showing all the possible meals we could cook that night, based on who's going to be home, what they like/don't like to eat, what's in the food stores at the moment, and how much time it will take to make and fit within everyone's schedule.

That to me is the web-wide-world, providing me directly with personal content that brings together all sorts of disparate data into a functional performance set, that is RELEVANT to my individual life activity.
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by Phil Duby 7 weeks ago
I think I provided [one possible] answer to that without reading your post :-)

Stuff: Things I own under My user-profile
tastes: under interests or preferences

For the acceptable recipes, mix in the family health information / diet restrictions (for medical or purely personal reasons). If the preliminary recipe options / schedules do not "match" well, you could get notified on the way home to pick up some ingredients, if that was not automatically added to the schedule before you left home.
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by Phil Duby 7 weeks ago
Darn, Google chrome will not show that. Just a blank page. Had to switch to FF to view. Now I can see it.

Interesting structure. Looks good. A few details / alternate ways of looking at pieces.

I do not see a particular reason to separate "Data on the web" and "INTERNET of tagged THINGS". At least for the portion "wearing a URL". It is all going to be web data. Some with geo coding, some without. Some with history / logs (sensor based data), some without.

The [garden] sensor data you show under "My user-profile" probably belongs under "Data on the web". Even though that is your own garden / sensors, given the other parts about "tagged things near me" under "My context", that sensor data is probably going to be 'on the web' (maybe private, but that is optional). The "My garden parameters" information *IS* part of the profile though, along with other 'preferences', like music, cuisine, sports, fashion, entertainment, more [under my interests I guess]. "where are my things?" is probably part of "tagged things near me", and My user-profile should have "What things do I own" with subsections for "What do I take with me?" for various activities. I see the profile as configurable but relatively static information. "where" is more dynamic and sensor driven. Then one of the "services" can match my context with the profile to remind you to pick up or leave behind the appropriate items depending on current plans. Add another [automatic] item to the context for "What I left home with" to prevent loosing things.

A good start. Could be expanded a lot, but there does not seem to be need for more to illustrate the concept, and the direction it could go.
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by François Dongier 7 weeks ago
Thanks, Rick & Phil, for these nice ideas. Some seem very simple to integrate: music taste as detail of my interests, smart fridge as another device (with missing ingredient recommendations as another service), medical record as part of my profile.
What i find harder at this point is, as Phil pinpoints, to clarify the relation between the "internet of things" and "the web" as we know it now, made of documents and data.
About Chrome: Mindmeister works well for me with it. Do u have a problems accessing maps from http://www.mindmeister.com/maps/public ?
(note: sometimes it takes a good few seconds before Mindmeister responds).
Ah, also: I would rather do this with Imindi than MindMeister :)
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by Phil Duby 7 weeks ago
What I got in chrome as a blank page with a single horizontal scroll bar. No vertical scroll, and could not find anything in horizontal scroll area. Zoom out did not seem to do anything. When I tried it again just now, viewing and manual scrolling worked fine. Zoom and recenter still not repsonding. Help! The gremlins are playing in my computer!
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by Phil Duby 7 weeks ago
For "internet of things" and "the web", the only differences I see are [may be] how you locate and access the target. Is it a URL you lookup with some sort of data search, and access with http / tcp/ip, or is it [only] found / findable because it is in 'signal range' for bluetooth / wi-fi / other, and accessed directly from your own devices without any intermediate lookup (like DNS). A target that publishes its address by direct transmission, but is accessed as a URL, still falls into the first case for me. If there are devices that can be accessed directly, but are 'found' with a web based datasearch, I would say the actual device is in the second set, and the lookup service is just an independent 'phone book'. To distinguish between these cases does not require any information about what the device capabilities are. A simple sensor that reports the current temperature [and optionally geo-location] could be implemented either way, and the access path would determine which 'bucket' to put it in. Same for a points of interest historical information 'kiosk'. That could contain a relatively large [static or dynamic] data set, text, images, multimedia. The [today] obvious implementation would be a web page / site. But if it is only accesses locally / directly, I would put it in the second group instead.

Getting more ideas while writing this. Todays existing point of interest displays / kiosks are purely visual / manual [with maybe sensors to tell when someone is close]. Future ones could be much more mixed / interactive, using the [selected / public] profile information to choose what to display [first], and perhaps allow limited use for the display facilities as a remote screen for the 'personal mobile device' doing relating queries. Basically, allow the cell phone to become a remote control for the information display. For this as well, the bucket I would put it in depends on whether the kiosk has web access / is accessible from the web or not.

I guess I do the split based on 'connectivity', and that is fairly artificial. Things that are only accessible / noticeable when you are close enough (in 'sight', [visual, audio, rf]) I do not include in 'the web', any more than I would one of today's roadside billboards (although some of the new electronic billboards could be programmed / updated from the Internet).
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