SAN FRANCISCO -- Web 2.0 Summit -- In a presentation here, Kevin Kelly, senior maverick at Wired, described the next 6,000 days of the Web as an always-on environment of data sharing, where every aspect of the world and our lives is connected to the Internet.
Kelly started his talk with a number, 6,527: the number of days since Tim Berners-Lee created the first Web page.
"All the things we see here on the Web, everything, has happened in 6,527 days. That's sort of an impossible achievement. There's not enough money in the world to accomplish all the things that have happened already."
No kidding.
Kelly describes the last 6,000 days or so as an era that began with linking packets and computers and eventually moved to linking pages. And if you've ever wondered what's coming after "Web 2.0," the next 6,000 days, Kelly says, will be about linking data. All of it.
"Every object we manufacture, every object we make, will have a little sliver of information in it -- maybe only as smart as an ant. So everything becomes part of this Web. Anything that can carry an electrical charge will be part of this Web," he says. "Basically, the entire world and everything in it becomes [part of] this database where it's reduced into elemental information, which is then linked and shared and restructured in a way that was not possible before."
The Web, says Kelly, will own every bit of information that is produced. "I almost think of it kind of like the Web is a black hole that's sucking up everything into it -- bringing it onto this one OS, which all information will flow through. Literally everything in our lives will be part of it and will carry some information that will speak the protocols... and that's beginning to happen already.
"It's something hard to talk about, but this social Web stuff gives us a new feeling and appreciation for the value of the collective."
But it won't just be a Web defined by optional sharing on Facebook, asserts Kelly, who referred to this next stage as "Semantic Web or Web 3.0 or Web 10.0 or Web Whatever." It will be an "extension of the self."
Showing a photo of a man with a cellphone strapped to his head with a rubberband, Kelly added, "The consequences of being off will become all the more apparent."
"Basically, the entire world and everything in it becomes [part of] this database where it's reduced into elemental information, which is then linked and shared and restructured in a way that was not possible before."
Would someone outline the key differences of semantic web and social web please?
6,527 days is almost 18 years. I still prefer to think in terms of years..I have a better frame of reference that way.
So how long before what you're wearing, which was purchased at Century 21 is read by the rfid reader of a department store elsewhere and the customized ads you recieve is based on that data?
thanks for the detail on Kevin's presentation, which looks like one I'd have liked to see. In the absence of video (yet!) on the Summit website, it sounds like a progression from Kevin's TED Talk which I briefly highlighted for ZDNet back in August (http://blogs.zdnet.com/semantic-web/?p=176) ?
The whole data linking meme is only going to get bigger, as more and more of the pieces fall into place. At a technical level, the Semantic Web stack is pretty robust and (as Tim Berners-Lee noted earlier this year), 'ready' for business use. In a research context, the activities of that community's Linked Open Data movement is demonstrating some of the possibilities that arise from reusing rather than reinventing commodity data.
Looking wider, recent enthusiasm for 'The Cloud' increases the opportunity for a move out of the enterprise silo and onto the network. Certain of Salesforce's announcements this month around force.com take the obvious step, and begin to expose (some) corporate data to (some) third parties rather than merely treating Cloud services as a physically remote extension of the inward-looking Intranet.
Technically, economically, pragmatically and philosophically, the pieces are all lining up. It's going to be an interesting ride.
Almost sounds a little scary, but I believe it. I use the internet for many different things every day - it has become my tool of choice for much of my daily activities. All that data out there is knowledge, and pulling it all together in a useful manner will only help us. Security will be a big issue, as will personal privacy, but it will happen.
I hope that is not the way to 'maverickally" celebrate an election victory!!!
I don't know if it's a typing error but you mentioned two figures of 6257 days and 6572 days and i really don't know which of the two figures is accurate or they both refer to two set of time periods?? I absolutely agree with Kelly that we've witnessed an unbelieveable feat during the last 6000 days. the next 6000 days will definitely see the crumbling of so call wall gardens and in the process making data of every king available on the web. As some one rightly pointed out " Success isn’t determined by how hard I can exclude you from scraping
your data - but how effectively and efficiently I can help you
share/use/reuse/hack/etc it.The future of the web will be determined by companies that can overcome
people challenges — to bring EVERYONE’S data online, and make it
useful. And it won’t be about locking up people’s data, but instead
helping them be smart about the free flow of their data".
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