Transparent web, transparent world
March 25th, 2007What’s the next big thing going to be on the web? I think location-based networks and services will definitely be part of what people will call web 3.0. I think they’re going to be a distinct feature, like tagging is a feature of “web 2.0″ applications. But I think the combined effect of location-based mobile data, robust social networks, increased automation and bandwith will lead to an entirely new experience. I’ll call it the ‘transparent web’. This isn’t really the same as more future versions of spimes and ubiquitious computing where rfid’s and remote computation power our environment. I think this first glimpse of transparency will be the first solid sign that the type of immersive technology is coming much faster than people realize. Imagine your cell phone starts telling you what’s around you, giving you advice by connecting you to your friends, experts, and live data feeds about any of your particular interests, as well as alerting you to what the overall community deemed important. All the time. From around the world. And through this network where you can tune in to the data right around you, you can flip the switch and find out what’s happening (or what’s happened) anywhere around the world. And all this info flows through other people just like you. The world is going to become much more transparent. It’ll be like you can look right through it, zero in on what’s important, and zoom out to see broader effects and patterns. Transparency means more acceleration across the spectrum of our human endeavors, because people tend to act on what they can see. Right now, the internet and web 2.0 let us see more of the world around us. Web 3.0 will feel like we just got a very personal telescope. Which makes sense, because each generation of the web could really be depicted in terms of pure bandwidth. I’m excited about web 3.0. Whatever it is, I want to see it.