I have become a huge fan of www.ted.com. I came across this very interesting talk by Kevin Kelly, founder-editor of the Wired magazine, on the future of the internet. He begins with a simple, yet powerful statistic – “the web is only about 5000 days old” and then goes on to predict the next 5000 days. Some key takeouts:
- The total processing power of the web will exceed that of the human race by 2040. He does this using simple approximations and using similarities in the functioning of the human brain and the web.
- All devices (PCs, mobiles, cameras, cars etc.) are just ‘windows’ to look into the big machine called the web. Every device will be web-based and the web will own every ‘bit’.
- Media will have a common platform.
- Humans will become the extended senses of the machine!
- Data would be able to transcend websites. Eg. you won’t have to tell different social networking websites about your identity. It will be able to identify you and your friends by itself.
- Humans and the web will be co-dependent. We will be “always on.” The web will be able to provide us a complete personalized experience, provided we are completely honest with it.
- In effect, the web will become much smarter, personalized (at the price of transparency) and very ubiquitous.
[...] I became a fan of TED. Fascinating stuff. Kevin Kelly impressed with his talk on the next 5000 days of the web. [...]