How I’d like the web to work
July 24, 2008 at 8:42 pm
Enjoyed a good chat with Niall Larkin and Bohoe at Open Coffee Dublin today. Whilst attempting to pry some information out of Mr L about his super secret patented project, we got on to talking about semantic web.
Semantic web is one interpretation of the future of the web based around how information is catalogued. It’s an orderly system of organising reams of information. You can read more about it here - in an interview with John Breslin of DERI.
My critique of semantic web is that it will remove the randomness that I know and love from the web. Just because I have shown myself in the past to be interested in dance music, doesn’t mean that I want to be presented only with dance music online forever. I may grow old and change my tastes to opera or something.
I want my web to continue to present me with randomness. Niall refers to what I want as semiotic web.
What would be really cool I think is to have a future where we can switch on and off our preferences for the kind of web we want at a particular time. So if I’m online and looking around for myself, I’ll go for semiotic web. But I’m on the hunt for info on a theme for a client, I’ll go for semantic web.
What do you think?
The New Web
May 29, 2008 at 9:29 am
Excellent post by Stowe Boyd in which he charts the rise of social media - from early day/Web 1.0 “Alone in the Library” to Web 2.0 “Global Village” to The Edge. His description of the edge is, I think, what semantic web is all about, but he doesn’t use the word semantic once! That’s because he’ll probably come up with a new word and then bandy that around as ‘the’ word for what’s going on.
He very accurately describes where we live now - wandering in the web and finding little clusters of people at the edges interacting with each other, trying to make sense of their own concerns.
As the edge grows, the center dissolves. Mainstream journalists begin to act like bloggers, editors begin to drop the veneer of objectivism, and immediate, first person voice becomes the standard not some radical minority.
And the world, once the subject of conversation, is itself changed when so many have changed their beliefs, either explicitly or at a level below awareness.
Boyd outlines the rules of the new web as he sees them:
- We are searching for a reason to be, to be linked into relationships where it would matter if we stopped coming back, where we can become ourselves through others.
- It’s a village world, where reputation matters, and affiliation is tribal. “Glocalisation” (first time I’ve heard that word and I don’t believe the last)
- When it becomes possible to remain connected with hundreds not dozens of people, and to remain cognisant of their backgrounds, location, moods, relationships, and positions on matters of importance -does the world become a deeper place or have our feelings become shallower?
- (And of course his favourite mantra…) Time is inconstant. We are adapting to Continuous Partial Attention.
It seems Stowe is on sparkling form and I for one am already looking forward to what he will have to say at Reboot 10 at the end of June.
