While I tend to appreciate Mark Cuban’s writing, his latest post really got me thinking. The internet, he argues (or argued, since it’s really just a highlight of two old posts) isn’t where “the future” is anymore. It’s here. Applications are being built on the internet en masse. And that means it’s a stable platform.
So I spent a lot of yesterday thinking: “What’s the next big game-changer?” What’s the next thing that will shake our society to the bone, like electricity, telephones, cable TV, and even the internet have done?
(It was a good day to think, by the way. Beautiful, crisp, and sunny, I spent the late afternoon on a bench with a newly-purchased copy of “The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci”… what a steal at $5!)
The answer I came up with made me both incredibly uncomfortable and incredibly excited (which, luckily, was what I was hoping to feel):
The next game-changer will open up people like the internet opened up data.
Think Web 2.0… but without the permission. Think about being able to reach anyone without anything standing in your way. But then think of the flipside: anyone can do the same to you.
A system — or a protocol — like this scares the daylights out of me because it’s too easy to game. Which is why — like the internet — it will need to start out slow. With people who are excited about the possibilities. With people who want to prove the skeptics wrong. And, ultimately, with people who see the promise to enhance their own lives by being involved.
By opening ourselves to others, by creating a searchable, indexable, and intuitive platform of universally-accessible people, we have the opportunity to enhance our own lives by enhancing everybody else’s. We also have the ability to directly connect and share wisdom with anyone sharing our journey from birth to unfortunate death.
The funny thing is (and this may, unfortunately, sound a bit “May 1968“) that most business executives, celebrities, and others who most of the masses would want to get in touch with right now won’t get involved until it’s too late. But, to be honest, they shouldn’t. We need them to keep society stable until this happens. Or, alternatively, as a fallback plan in case this fails.
No, this platform, system, protocal — whatever you want to call it — will be built, tested, and developed by those of us who aspire to be like them. It will be built by the people who want to reach that level and, by the time they (or we) do, it will hopefully have whatever spam filters are necessary to keep it from negatively impacting their (or our) lives.
Yes, I know Facebook kind of does this. Yes, I know Twitter kind of does this, too. But what they’re really missing is the ability to be accessed. There’s no way to reach someone directly, and they lack proper accountability. I mean, sure, things can be public, but that doesn’t mean that anything you do right will impact you positively (or vice-versa).
Conclusion:
The next big game-changer, at least in my mind, will be a ubiquitous platform that makes everyone in the world easily find-able and accessible, like the internet did for documents. Anyone want to start working on a model protocol?
March 17, 2009 at 2:29 am |
The biggest thing, in my opinion, to come out of the ubiquity of the internet as it stands is the amalgamation of vast stores of human knowledge. The next big thing will be something that organizes and analyzes data in a way that people can understand and interact with.
Two things that stick out in my mind:
I saw a talk a few years back from an incredibly inspirational guy, Ari Gordon-Schlosberg, who’s doing cutting edge work on data analysis (http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/conference/2007/video/UIUC-ACM-RP07-GordonSchlosberg.avi) the video is about a year and a half old, but it demonstrates my point really well. The big thing here is humanizing data. Putting data that you care about in a format you can intuitively understand. Also these guys are fanatically committed – I got the demo at least a few times – at the conference, in the hallway, and later at the pub… seriously. More videos: http://www.palantirtech.com/videos/
Siftables – saw the ted video a while back, it’s now available on http://www.siftables.com These things are going to fundamentally the way we think about data. Possibilities are huuuge and exciting.
Basically, we have a near infinite well of data a very limited amount of time and attention to make it into something useful. So I think what you’re going to be hearing about in the future is humanizing data. If you want a current buzzword, it’s already starting to show in the idea of “the semantic web” and early rumblings of web 3.0.
March 17, 2009 at 2:51 am |
Someone sent me an email (not going to call them out) following up on this post. I wanted to share (a part of) what I wrote back:
Like I said on the blog (though quite a bit of it was pure, unadulterated word vomit… me just trying to figure out what I’m thinking), I think the next BIG thing will be connecting people, bringing us closer to what Kevin Kelly calls “the one mind” (which he also thinks is the BIG future ahead of us, though I don’t remember reading about if it’ll happen soon or how it would happen).
It’ll probably start off as… I don’t know, a directory? Maybe a wiki, with universal access? But it would have to be self-organizing, I would think… not just an application built on the internet. Something that becomes a part of us, ultimately… tethering our eyes and ears to our minds, our phones, and the mobile/wireless web.
Just a thought experiment I’ve been playing with recently, I suppose. I’m no engineer, and doubt I could build it myself.
March 17, 2009 at 3:04 am |
@Alex — Have you seen Tim Berners-Lee’s recent TED Talk on just that? Though he calls it Open Data… He sees the next evolution of the web as where we store all of our raw data (not just our documents) and let people play with it, make it interactive and “human”.
I don’t think that that will revolutionize our lives the way the web did, though. While it’s uncomfortable for some companies to give away their data, it’s a natural progression: first documents, then data. Data, as I see it, is just the next “version” of the web. Like you said, Web 3.0. Whereas the Web isn’t “Phones 2.0″ or “Electricity v7″.
What I’m arguing for, I guess, is a ubiquitous, universally-accessible system that connects people to each other. Instead of connecting us with our side effects (data), or our voices/thoughts (phone), the next BIG thing would be connecting us to ourselves… Being permanently plugged in to society.
Like I said before, it’s like the prospect Kevin Kelly talks about: “The One Mind”… but what’s the “next action” that will propel us there?