The web is not dead as long as I, the user, am its raison d’être
I don’t care whether the web is dead or the internet is alive – as long as I get from it what suits me best.
Chris Anderson claims, in a very controversial article, that that The web is dead, long live the internet.
You wake up and check your email on your bedside iPad — that’s one app. During breakfast you browse Facebook, Twitter, and The New York Times — three more apps. On the way to the office, you listen to a podcast on your smartphone. Another app. At work, you scroll through RSS feeds in a reader and have Skype and IM conversations. More apps. At the end of the day, you come home, make dinner while listening to Pandora, play some games on Xbox Live, and watch a movie on Netflix’s streaming service.
You’ve spent the day on the Internet — but not on the Web.
THE WEB IS NOTHING WITHOUT ITS USERS.
An infrastructure, an array of apps – once it is commoditized, it is hardly the issue anymore.
From a task oriented, information and communications points of view, the web is a utility, like an electricity grid. Supplied through solar energy or through other kinds of plant – important environmentally or economically – but its very existence taken for granted, and from here on the only issue for me, the user, is what do I use it for.
The web’s ubiquity has become a given, the application economy is flourishing and now it’s getting closer to the users and their dominant place as the anchors of web based systems.
The mobile web brings the web closer to me, wherever I am. The social web harnessesmy social sphere for sharing, building a trust base and leveraging marketing, communication, commerce and information seeking.
The next stage is concentrating not just on interaction between users as leverages on the web economy, but on the individual itself, as an Itom in a people’s grid. Putting the user at the center will empower a new dimension to the web.
From such a user centered point of view, the only real issue for me within the web’s amplitude of offerings, is personal relevance.
The web will evolve to truly serve people individually.
The semantic web will revolutionize use of browsers, applications and web based sociality to evolve around individuals’ contextified experiences, interests and activities. It will be about the attention economy – personal relevance to personal user, optimization of applicability to suit their dynamic interests, activities and automatically serve their fluctuating needs.
The missing link is contextification syatems that perceive the individual as a whole, contextifiy her experience,and create an attention economy based on context as a measuring scale for services, transactions and degree of relevance.
The web is not dead – it is evolving towards its ultimate goal – a people’s web – a web that will eventually become what is destined to be – an Icentered web of life, for each of us, individually – the web according to me.
