In this morning's keynote address, technology visionary Kevin Kelly shed a whole new perspective on the web when he reminded us that it's only 7,000 days old. Still just a baby.
Setting the tone with a quote from the Mad Hatter, he got us all thinking about "impossible things."
The web is certainly not just a different, better or more powerful version of TV. It's a whole different set of metaphors. One way to illustrate that notion is a project Kevin mentioned where he asked people draw a map of the internet.
One of the new metaphors we are moving into is streams. We are producing countless streams of data--not just people, but things, too--that are getting pulled into the web. First we were just making the data, but now we are sharing it in streams.
And this is where the cloud comes in. The cloud is where we share data. And, as Kevin described, we are in the cloud. The cloud is made of us. All our different devices are the windows we use to look into the same cloud.
The Quantified Self. Kevin shared the concept of life loggers -- people who are tracking tremendous amounts of data about themselves -- and, again, sharing it, not just holding it privately. There are about 170 self-tracking web sites for people who share everything from their daily activities, moods, reading and movie watching, to weight, heart rate, sugar level and medications.
"People will share anything because there is value in sharing. Sometimes information doesn't have value until it's shared."
I also appreciated his perspective on real-time. Obviously we are all a little focused on that here at iCitizen and in general, but he reminded us about its importance. "Real-time doesn't mean there is no value in history or future. By logging everything you're doing you are making your now more valuable."
The Metaphor Shifts
- PC to Cloud
- Today to Now
- Me to We
- Items to Data
"The new regime is about streams, cloud, now, we and data."
And while our streams are in the cloud, Kevin pointed out that gestures (think iPad) are how we talk to the cloud--not just fingertips on the keyboard.
So what about the next 7,000 days? Not just a better web. Something completely different. A different metaphor. A different framework.
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