Fabulous article by Tim O’Reilly: Inventing the Future. He describes an "Emergent Internet Operating System" i.e. emergent both in the sense that the features of cutting-edge internet he describes are emerging out of numerous nodes/projects/people, but that many of those technologies/offerings are based around notions of emergent information organisation.
Check his bullets for a handy checklist on what to be developing right now:
Wireless
"Community 802.11b networks are springing up everywhere as hackers realize they can share their high-speed, high-cost Internet connections, turning them into high-speed, low- or no-cost connections for a larger group of people"
Next generation search engines
"New search engines are taking this even farther, basing searches on the implicit webs of trust and interest reflected not only by link counts (a la Google) but by who specifically links to whom."
Weblogs
"intensely personal and built around the connectivity between people and ideas, they are creating a new set of synapses for the global brain … a platform for experimentation with the way the Web works: collective bookmarking, virtual communities, tools for syndication, referral, and Web services."
Instant messaging
"collaboration, "presence management," and instant communication … messaging (as) the paradigm for a new class of applications."
File sharing
"When everyone is connected, all that needs to be centralized is the knowledge of who has what … exposing the local file-system via distributed-content management systems. This is fundamental infrastructure for a next generation global operating system."
Grid computing
"use the idle computing power of millions of interconnected PCs to work on problems that were previously intractable because of the cost of dedicated supercomputers … a computing utility much like the power grid–will have an enormous impact on both science and business in the years to come."
Web spidering
"hackers realize they can build "unauthorized interfaces" to the huge Web-facing databases behind large sites, and give themselves and their friends a new and useful set of tools."
Having outlined a blueprint of the next steps, O’Reilly launches into an fascinating little piece on web spidering and developing internet APIs. Includes this great aside:
"One of the beauties of the Internet is that it has an architecture that promotes unintended consequences. You don’t have to get someone else’s permission to build a new service. No business negotiation. Just do it. And if people like what you’ve done, they can find it and build on it."
Inventing the Future, at oreilly.net
[via Interconnected]
Very, very interesting piece. I can see why you were so taken with it. In addition to the quotes you pulled, I’d point out a couple…
‘Why would a company that has a large and valuable data store open it up in this way?
My answer is a simple one: because if they don’t ride the horse in the direction it’s going, it awill run away from them. The companies that “grasp the nettle firmly” (as my English mother likes to say) will reap the benefits of greater control over their future than those who simply wait for events to overtake them.’
Every ostrich-like music biz exec should read that one over and over.
And this one:
‘It’s easy to take search engines for granted. But they are prototypes for functionality that we will all need when our personal data storage exceeds that which the entire Web required only a few years ago.’
Absolutely – and crucial for people like us concerned with the future distribution of cultural IP. Getting consumers to stuff the want – even if they don’t know they want it – is what our jobs are all going to be about, I believe. Repeat until fade: Amazon; Google; TiVo.
Oh, and I like the idea of ‘wearable computing’!