Kevin Kelly On The Next 5,000 Days Of The Web: Bridging The Gap Between Virtual and Real.

Posted on 09. Nov, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci in Trends

It’s that time of the year again, when we’re about to get bombarded by predictions for the next 12 months, 99% of which, let’s say it, are going to be wrong.

In this TED video, recorded at the Entertainment Gathering in December 2007, Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired , writer and futurologist, starts by observing that the Web is only 5000 days old, and offers predictions for the next 5,000 days. That should spare us up from a few years of wrong blabbering about unlikely futures.

Kelly postulates that the next Web will differ from the actual one because it will be:

Smarter, with some AI, most likely the Google one;
Personalized;
Ubiquitos, for all devices become portals into it.

What will get us there? Three main trends are identified by the futurologist.

Embodiment

In the next 5,000 days, all will be connected through the web and become web-based. Software and phones are already there. Soon we will have one media platform and media will be “free”, i.e. restrictions on its use will fall apart. Humans will become extensions of the machine or the one web platform.

Semantic

The first phase of the web was about creating links between computers; the second was links between web pages; and now we are linking to open data and ideas everywhere. Semantics will allow us to create this Internet of “things” (physical things).

Co-operation

In order to be smart, the next web has to be totally personalized. But personalization comes at the cost of privacy. Only total transparency allows total personalization. If your data is transparent, Google could serve as much of your own memory or more: Google is moving towards AI. We are the web and becoming one “machine”.

Enjoy!