It might as well be named that. Version numers, and tech words like beta and app are commonplace. And so is participation on the web. It took 100 million work hours to create wikipedia. That is a massive undertaking, and the vast majority of labour was done in peoples spare time. Most of the papers are written almost singelhandidly by one person. And then follows hundreds of iterations, citations, spell checking and so on. But all contributions need not be of this magnitude.
Lots of a little becomes a lot. Wikipedia is one easy example. Equally important are youtube, millions of blogs and microblogs. While most of these are examples of how normal lives pervade and enrich the internet, microbloggin is now in a higher degree meshing with the real world.
The big bottleneck for interaction from web to real world is how the information is sorted and represented in our physical reality. The most natural way this is happening now is with cell phones, and other mobile units.
Combining maps, cell phones, microblogging and a GPS, you can instantly tap into a sort of minute by minute zeitgeist. When I logg into google maps, I can choose to view the hundreds of Buzz updates. Informing, and misinforming me. But at least giving me a fair sense of what the more tech minded people are thinking out there: What is playing right now? Has there been any recent accidents? And so on. But remember that there are people behind every bit of information. While not strictly a spare- time endevour, such influences fall under the same category of indivudal effort, ehancing our reality.
Times are changing. That simultainiously epic and trite compination of words captures that essence of urgency which I wish to convey to you now. Times Are Changing.
Microiterations to bigger texts, small text updates and above all puctures are so easily shareable, that it seems they are particularily suited for mobile updating of current events.
Opening up the screen, making it bigger, giving the internet more space is but opening a window to all the metada available outside our brains. So the famed bottle neck is shifting from access, to reading and input limitations. This is certainly not lost on the pioners of computer technology today.
Still. The vast majority of these technologies lie far in the future. It seems that these kinds of thecnological steps are not done in leaps and bounds, but by incremental steps. So far we have not seen the limit to what people are willing to accept into their lives.
As with every other technology there are fears and worries, but those are quickly overcome. Much more slowly the ethical conciderations creep into place. Who knows. Maybe one day it will be concidered immoral not to buzz/twitter/what ever about major happenings.
It is impossible to predict the future. But we can all dream about it, and by adopting new technologies help shape it. What technologies do you think should become a reality? Leave any interesting things in the comment section below.
Image Curtesy of sndrv
Update:
Clay Shirky has also had a wonderful presentation about this on TED. The video deals with the same theme, but makes a new and exiting distinction. For whom is the product produced valuable. Also there is some light sociology in the mix.
