web3 – to be or what to be? that is the question

As years go by I ask myself: isn't it time to follow up on the essay I wrote back in 1996 - “the medium shapes the message”? Perhaps now that practically all of those speculations have been realised, finally the time has come. Incidentally I re-published it at the start of this blog.

In 2007 I came across a rhetoric posed by Richard Bartle “to be or what to be? that is the question” - since then it has been my sig line and an inspiration for all kinds of fantasies about the internet. It is only fair that I should consider this notion as a theme for contemplations on the future of the web.

Web3 is fast becoming the industry buzzword. The enabling technology is pretty much in place, all we need now is the next generation of killer applications. There are some good technical ideas talked about a lot, but technicalities rarely inspire more than Sci-Fi plots and this isn't what I intend. Without boring you to death, for the most part I'll attempt to adhere to the emotional aspects of what's to come.

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technical future or failure – briefly

Obviously the most significant term we hear today is the “semantic web” and perhaps we may be finally ready to realise that rather old dream. Visionary technology always takes time. Ted Nelson proposed a very idealistic conception of hypertext (including the term) back in 1963, he was intuitive enough to call the project Xanadu. It is a very illusive goal - XML === semantic web and even earlier DKNF, also aimed to achieve the same thing with very little success. For those thinking of fashion, DKNF (Domain Key Normal Form) is a methodology described by C.J. Date in early 1970s prescribing the generation of uniform database entity keys across knowledge domains. Similarly to XML, the implementation of ubiquitous DKNF hasn't been achieved yet, even if some examples of “enterprise keys” (poor cousin of DKNF) and common XML tags adopted on industry-wide basis do exist.

Just like Artificial Intelligence, semantic web is a great promise, which encounters a brick wall upon any attempts to broadly generalise the rules. The problem of the representation of common-sense knowledge presents barriers which appear to elude practical approaches tried so far. Some philosophers point to the “embodied cognition” as a main reason for this difficulty. The constructs of knowledge and its representation are formed in relation to the human experience and our sense of the body. We have an intimate knowledge of the world around us, but capturing it gets ever harder the more generalised and universal this description is intended to be. In essence, as we tend towards the general, typologies and taxonomy replace attributes and a consensus about the significance of discrete entities becomes contentious in various domains of expertise.
Perhaps given a pragmatic approach, solutions of limited scope will be adopted and prove to be effective in providing some practical value for now. This outcome would be far from ideal, but more realistic considering the utopian nature of the problem. Other solutions could also eventuate in unanticipated ways, e.g. emerge from the chaos of user content tagging... we will see. If anyone is actually interested, I'm happy to help with knowledge engineering issues and elaborate further, but I don't wish to make this argument any more obscure or unapproachable now.

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an intuitive prelude to the next web

Taxes and death are said to be the only certain future, but so is appetite once a taste for something new is experienced. Web2 or Social Web has given us the appetite, so we are ready for more and have some idea of what works and what is simply lame or just another 'me too' attempt at best. Web3, in my view, will be a stage when our avatar matures and gets a life beyond the juvenile bitching temperament so dominant online in the last few years.

Is that it? Just a few words: avatar, life and emotions. Yes and to the contrary, this is a huge ask. The future of the Web is you, me and our lives. Reality Mining is here and the companies behind it aren't likely to lose interest in developing the infrastructure and the services based on 'big' data. Web-cams, smart-phones, geolocation, real-time content, etc. may be good, but there is more to come and the next thing is very close even if it hasn't taken-off yet.

A vision of virtual identity is coming into being – avatar, emotional states, sense of presence, shared situations and experiences. These allures will inevitably continue to penetrate our existence in increasingly ubiquitous and pervasive ways enabling a sense of participation and the fuzzy rewards implied by such states. For now, the hardest part is describing a paradigm without suitable analogies or practical metaphors. Let me try without attempting to exhaust the possibilities.

Imagine presenting/communicating a scenario through a medium able to mush-up a real world representation with avatar performances derived from any given situation, all under your control. Another way to visualise this, might be a high fidelity fusion of Second Life avatars in a Google Earth Stree View context with sound, in a totally arbitrary collage of content from real and virtual space, performances and chronology of real-time or from a persistent store of past events.

I think there may be a few laughs in that, just like the incidentally recorded or intentionally set-up videos we watch on YouTube and it probably would constitute a great source of content to post there as well. Perhaps you have a few ideas too, feel free to comment.

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simplicity rules

The greatest aspect of doubt in the above scenario is the notion that “easy” and “simple” always win on the Web and the more complex capabilities seem to die in the long run. The most common view regarding the success of Facebook over MySpace, previously the dominant SN platform, was the plain interface and limited possibilities in comparison with the open-ended style of the predecessor. This was largely true, in the days when blogs and MySpace pages were a new thing, both required a fair bit of creativity from the user. However, the great majority somewhat lacked in that respect and felt intimidated, even if it may have seemed that everyone was writing a blog or posting pictures and music tribute pages. In reality very few actually wrote anything and those people were strongly motivated by one thing – a chance to gain readers and ride the tide of wide media attention obsessed with the new phenomenon. Similarly, MySpace gave people a chance to have their own Web presence and an outlet for their aspirations and creativity.

When Facebook emerged, everyone got a chance to participate with very little effort and since the capabilities were so poor, nobody felt like a poor cousin to the more creative show-off crowd. The masses flooded in and at large it satisfied the need to share snapshots of their lives. Seven years on it is still growing, but we can't be deluded that a “wall” and few things added as time went by is the ultimate function set. Indeed, Google+ surprised me by providing such a blatant duplicate. Considering the earlier attempts to innovate the mediums (Gmail and Google Wave), I was naive enough to expect more. Popularity of Facebook is growing not so much because it is precisely what people want, but because the platform is so ubiquitous now that everyone else needs to join it just to post a comment on anything going on around them. Yet another factor is the age group spread, kiddies and the aged are getting in on the act too. What does it say about G+? We will see, but I doubt that many will switch. Perhaps it will have more impact on Linkedin than the target in its sight.

The Facebook login/membership/profile has a lot to offer as far as new SN possibilities are concerned and increasingly it is integrated into new portals, as well as allowing for external data to be imbued into its space via the apps API. These days, the prolific population and the extent of participation on Facebook constitutes a tempting proposition to plug into that crown instead of building a competing presence from scratch. Providing that the Facebook policy remains committed to this model and all intelligence suggests it isn't likely to be compromised if the anticipated company float is to ever get off the ground in a big way, there are a lot of possibilities for extending the FB virtual identity and profile in a number of ways.

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virtual face-off

This is the most likely path towards a more complex participation model and additional capabilities being explored in an effective way. In the event that Google would succeed in wiping Facebook off the face of the Earth, the controversy of real name identity aside, the same if not broader opportunities would most likely exist. The vision of a next generation richer virtual identity is very likely to encompass all manner of entertainment forms our devices are and will be capable of. When SN, as we know it now, was born AJAX (Web2) technology was just a geek way to build dynamic content using HTTP request object in JavaScript, which didn't have a vernacular name. However, what proved to be the most significant step for Social Web and is about to become a lot more prominent, is not the technology, but identity. Ever seen anyone log-into iGoogle intentionally? Not very likely, it would be such a nerdy thing to do. Google struggles so hard to track and target user profiles and yet the opposite is true of FB and it is worth a lot more than my estimate, actually I better double it, perhaps double it every Christmas starting with 2011...

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situated being and sharing

What sets this new Social Web apart is situatedness (yup most likely a new word 4u), the integrity of communication in the real world is approximately: 40% context, 40% emotions of body language and tone and only some 20% words. Current SN communication is devoid of the main cues we are so reliant on and the effect of this is obvious to anyone reading a “wall” or “stream” for the first time, even more obvious (by contrast) to the users of richer SN platforms like Second Life (SL). By no means am I suggesting Social Web could adopt SL or a similar platform, but the key aspects of situated social events and hangouts together with a richer sense of identity and individual style will inevitably penetrate our online and real life space.

My own experience of being Charlette Proto in an experiment lasting a few years of a 24/7 virtual life in SL is by all means an extreme example. However, it provided me with a lot more than the metaphors and analogies to visualise some of the likely aspects of a future social life and a heightened expectation of SN at large. Above all, it illustrated just how rich a virtually situated life can be and a possible explanation of how the naff angst and all this frustrated bietchin of today's SN is born out of the struggle to squeeze more of our life between the lines.

TBC