The Next 5,000 Days on the Web Response

"There is only One machine. The web is its OS. All screens look into the One. No bits will live outside the web. To share is to gain. Let the One read it. The One is us." This is how Kevin Kelly ends his speech about where the web has been and where it is headed. He refers to how when Web 1.0 was the standard, society thought that its successor was just going to be the TV but better. We were wrong. He says that now people believe it is just going to be more wikis and more user-generated content and more of whatever has been characterized as Web 2.0 features. However, Kevin Kelly explains that the next 5,000 days on the web are not headed for that future at all. Rather, the web will begin to take on a life and consciousness of its own.

As of now, people use the web to connect to sources of information. Kelly is saying that we should open ourselves up to the fact that the web may be heading in a direction where information will be connected by even more portals. He describes the internet as the greatest machine. He mentions that our cell phones are starting and soon will be completely connected to the internet. Microsoft Word is handled offline, but if Kelly is right then all of these sources and portals of information will be on the web in no time.

Web 3.0 may be heading to a world where each individual is completely transparent, which could be very dangerous. Not only would we be releasing and creating information available to everyone, but we would be allowing the web to memorize our patterns of behavior. In this new web style, the internet will have an understanding of who we are. Rather than just completing fulfilling search demands, the internet will be able to access search history and other information to understand what and why we are searching for. A good example of this is Nabaztag, the ubiquitous computing technology I described in my midterm paper.