Does the Internet has some kind of overall big change management process J hah! No!
I don't think so....
Then why are we talking about the Web 2.0?
The internet can be ‘controlled’ from a technical infrastructure perspective, but the application (TCP/IP) layer and the data that is communicated can’t be controlled. For all non ‘IT Internet specialists’.. The internet has no system to globally control content or webapplications. You got protocols and development languages, but almost no ways to control the internet…. That’s the beauty.
So, today we have unlimited human readable content publications methods (web sites).. Nice!
We got millions of pages that are linked together.. We can access this content by using ‘human keyword operated giant computer scripts… Aka Search Engines. .. hmmm
This are computer applications that follow all links on the internet (from many different starting points) and ’spider’ the (HTML based) information on web servers. The content found by the search engine ‘spiders’ is examined by (data mining) software, that uses computer search algorithms to sort, group and rank the information.
Is this working? .. well, it nice, but… is this really effective? .. No
So what’s this new phase for the internet that we have entered?
The technology on which the internet is based has evolved in the last couple of years. What this technology will bring is hard to predict, not even the smartest people could do this. One thing is for sure, we haven’t seen 1% of it in action yet…
The internet of today can be used to do (human configured) publications and subscription services (webservices). These services can find other services based on a machine readable yellow pages (UDDI) or by a pointers set by the programmer. Webservices can also make contact to other webservices and make ‘data exchange agreements’ and share information based on models.
What’s happening in 2006?
We will continue building (machine readable) information publication and subscription services. These services will bring us new ways to efficiently consume and share information (using RSS and SSE). And this will help us solving our daily problems and needs.
It would be nice if everybody did some thinking in how we can use this in our international advantages. I wish everybody a great, inspired and networking 2006.
Maarten Visser
PS.
Many people see the whole ‘web 2.0' thing wrong.. This isn’t yet another Buzz or Hype.. It’s just the momentum in the mind of (internet) developers.. And the potential we feel….
And no! This isn’t about start-ups that want money from VC’s.. This is about developers and entrepreneurs who can imagine the extremely exciting future we are facing…
We people are lazy. We do our ‘one plus one is two’ based on history and own experiences. This is why people talk about another bubble and other negative things….Sorry people, this is your wake-up call. Everything will be different for the coming years! J