ANALYSIS-IN-BRIEF, Global –Tim Berners-Lee is the father of the internet as a useful tool, in the form of the Web. He was there at the web’s birth, as the picture of the CERN web server following shows.
If you want to understand the future of the internet, as a communication medium then read Berners-Lee’s book, “Weaving the Web”.
Here’s the Amazon bio on it. Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web
I have his book sit on my shelf, right on top of a swag of ebusiness books; but his book is the classic and the real deal.
Berners Lee’s Vision of a Web of Data talking to Data about Data
The same employer of Bern, CERN, where alongside Boston’s MIT and other US institutions including US ARPA, did a lot of foundation work on the World Wide Web.
Technology is allowing a lot of the prophetic visions in Berners-Lee thinking, and his 199 book, to come true. The book can be heavy going for non-technical or non-visionaries, but give it a try, it’s a great read.
Both here in this blog in my post on the Semantic Web (data talking about data and to data), and in my presentations since 1999 for clients of Simple (www.simple.net.au) and I’ve been long talking about this.
More than a few of you may remember this stuff from the first 45 minutes of my HTML or Adobe classes in 2000/2001…
Why is this SO important to the future?
The web is an enabling technology, not replacing what went before, but like phones enabling whole new types of commerce, art, media, communications, ideas.
Now technology is catching up to possibility. CERN more or less said so.
The Rise of the Interest Site
This is an effect. Global Aggregation of interest. One of those is the rise of interest in hobbies and entertainments like magic, poker, bridge and card games.
The massive online communities that enjoy these activities allow them to acquire new participants in the offline world.
My ventures online have shown me globally that much of the mainstream news media is out of touch with what really interests media consumers.
Poker took the mainstream media by storm, yet came out of left field.
Interest Groups according 2thinknow
There’s a whole list of predictions that could be made about emerging industries that will take off. It’s not coolhunting, which is basically looking for ‘fads’ not ‘trends’.
Fads don’t become the future. Trends are underlying forces that do.
But to get into these industries businesses have to turn around the ships of industry, which favors more the small nimble firm or nimble teams within big firms.
There’s a whole new paradigm developing here. Small business and flexible innovation.
And a lot of it derives from Sir (yes he was knighted) Tim Berners-Lee’s magnificent and magnanimous contribution. What I like most about Berners-Lee is his tireless dedication to outcomes and sharing technology so that all of us can use it.
Broadband Enabling Knowledge Sharing
Now it seems Berners-Lee vision is being enabled further by broadband. Which is why we need to fight for better broadband in Australia, as well as large areas of the USA and many European countries.
Broadband enables traditional keepers of knowledge, like universities to have new ways to share and collaborate globally.
Quoting from Vu-Net, a brief article:
The growth in high-speed internet access around the world has changed the way business and academics collaborate, and led to a “globalisation of innovation”, according to a department head at Cern.
David Foster, head of communications and networks at Cern, claimed that the scientific community is as much affected as business.
“What we are seeing is a globalisation of innovation,” he said. “From our own perspective, the availability of high-packet network broadband is causing major changes in business models. This is also true of science.”
“Communications now means that you can actually do global research without storing sections of your papers in one location,” he said.
So that says it.
It’s a brave new world. Rules will be changed, fortunes made and lost.
And Web 2.0 or the next name for the future of Berners-Lee vision will roll onwards.
Take care,
Christopher
Connect