Slashdot Mirror

There's a book about this.

It's called City Come a Walkin. It was published in 1980. William Gibson had some nice things to say about it.

The problem, in the book, is the problem we're seeing here. Some rich club mob wants to take over the Internet. They want to control the communications system, and they want to be the gatekeepers of what all will go over the wires. And they're using it to leech off of, and eventually control, society.

Cities have a way of becoming self-aware. In the book, we meet San Fransisco: City. And we meet Sacramento, briefly. (She looks like a prostitute, apparently.) Chicago's also got a soul- in a living man. New York. Phoenix. The major cities- They start to take on a life of their own.

And they fight as hard as they can against the network controllers. But... "When the city comes a walkin' we'll all be obsolete."

I don't want to spoil it. :) Go read it yourself.

There was an interesting article a while back about a Collaborative Human Interpreter (CHI).

The idea is to harness this kind of thing to develop software for the global brain.

Well, I think we've exchanged enough ideas.

I don't yet agree with many things you've said, but there's enough to chew on, and as I think through these ideas, my thoughts may change.

Thank you for your time and thoughts.

Even humans, who have evolved in a fully concurrent environment, are much more productive when they're NOT interrupted.

Oh, for sure.

Just: Some times, the explicit activity that we're trying to be productive at is holding a conversation.

It's not the end of live communication.

I have read Accelerando. Nothing in it detracts from this concept, that people have live communications with one another. In the post-human future, the definition of "live communication with full attention" changes and gets more complicated, but the basic principle is still there, and it surely doesn't defy the idea that people, present day, find value in live communication with each other.

If it's annoying that your boss plays primate games with you by commanding your attention, and doesn't simply email you, that's one thing. But to completely deny the utility of live conversation for the next few decades, is quite another.

The people that I program with, we get together every once in a while. We do it to discuss things interactively. Getting clarification where it is needed, and telling people "wait, you're going too long on this thing, I already get it," is an enormous time saver. The easiest way to do it is to meet in person. We can't quite do that, so we meet in IRC. But it is painful in IRC. If I'm looking at a web page, I have to say, "I'm looking at X web page, will you look at it to?" "Okay." "Now, do you see the part where it says Foo?" "No,..." "Down by the bottom..."

In Second Life, people can see your head turn, and get a good concept of what you're looking at. In IRC, there is no equivalent. A superior environment will make this possible and fluid and transparent. It has the possibility of being better than, more transparent than, material interaction. I think it can be that way within 15 years.

The reason why we can communicate more ideas per unit time in a live communication setting, is because we make errors when we simulate another person's mind in our head. We think that they didn't understand X, and spend more time on explaining it, when a shorter explanation would have been done fine. And we think that they would understand Y, and spend a brief moment refering to it, when in fact they don't know the basis of Y, and need some more elaboration on it. There are other reasons as well; I don't know how much energy I need to work into preparing the message for you, I think this should be enough. If I'm wrong, you'll need to send a message to me requesting clarifications, and I'll need to type to you a response.

I strongly believe that, if we were talking live, in person, this whole exchange between us would take less than 15 minutes; We would very quickly unconsciously communicate (through facial expression, gesture, and posture) "I don't need this" when we already get a point. When we need elaboration on something, we just ask. Sincerely, I tell you- this conversation would have been much more efficient, had it been a live exchange.

Let's suppose that, as I was typing this, you happened to arrive to the Slashdot. It might say at the top of the page, "You have 1 message in progress!" That would mean that I am responding to you. Let's suppose now that you had a moment, and went in to see me writing this. You see me typing away.

"Ah, Lion, I already know this stuff," you think to yourself.

While I'm writing, I see you enter the area: A small icon blinks on at the side of the page. You're here!

"Oh, hey, how you doing? What do you think?"

"Well, I already understand this idea; What I meant to say is--..."

And what would have been a very lengthy back-and-forth is cut down to a very short conversation.

Surely, there is efficiency in live communication, no?

• CommunityWiki:SecondLife
• CommunityWiki:DevelopersVirtualWorld

• CommunityWiki:SecondLife
• CommunityWiki:DevelopersVirtualWorld

I don't have the time to give you the full response you deserve; I'm at work in a crunch time right know.

I just wanted to tell you, very briefly:

Which is why I can't understand why you're referring to a shared whiteboard application that happens to be written using DHTML and Java and maybe SVG as a "side system".

No; Those aren't side-systems-- those are core infrastructure. (SVG will be, shortly, when Firefox 1.5 releases, and when the next IE comes out.)

I just recently wrote up (in the bus) and posted (here at work) to CW: Platforms First, which may explain my perspective better.

You know, this conversation is really dumb. It's some kind of warped idea pissing match, and I'm not interested in participating anymore.

I think the idea of holding back a text until it's done is interesting and good. I've seen it before. I'm not convinced that I wouldn't like to see text as it's being written, or at least to have the option to see it as it's written.

I'll tell you why.

One day, I was writing a post for the communitywiki. A friend of mine sent me a Skype message; He was just curious about what I was up to, what I was thinking about, how I was doing. I texted back to him: "Well, actually, I'm working on a post you might be interest in." We agreed to open up a gobby session, and I copied and pasted my text into it. I continued writing my post, him looking over my shoulder.

I wrote something poorly, and he asked a question about it: "What do you mean by xyz?" He and I talked a bit in Skype IM, and then I realized the text was unclear. We talked about how to fix it, and then put the fix in place.

While I worked on the text below, I noticed that every now and then, he'd fix a spelling error he'd noticed. He'd also point an arrow and say, "What is this?" or "I don't think I agree here..." Things like that.

It was a good interaction. The classical problem with writing is that you can't get your audiences response to the writing in real time. This problem is now solved. It is rare in the material world that we are physically present with people who will be reading it at the same time. In the online world, this is actually easier to do; Place in the world doesn't matter so much.

There were some problems with the interaction though: It took entirely too long to negotiate gobby to make this a regular thing.

In most of our IRC meetings, we'd like to keep some schematic notes, and a record of the meeting. This requires that we negotiate a transfer to using a whiteboarding app (such as the Coccinella on the Jabber networks,) or to using gobby. There are problems such as so-and-so doesn't have Foo installed, or Bar installed, or whatever. And then there's the time it takes to get a group of people on the same page. Then there's the problem that the people who aren't around when we negotiate a transfer are "abandoned" - when we're talking in gobby, the folk in #onebigsoup on IRC don't see our words.

This is a problem because most of the time, the way we manage to get together and talk together is that 2 people happen to be around and make a conversation, and then later the other members notice that there is activity on the channel, and then tune in to see if they are interested. (I have a general strategy for improving with this kind of conversational tinderwood, I call it "OverHear." If you should happen to think it's a stupid idea, please don't let me know.)

Anyways- when we go into gobby, the "conversational tinderwood" is gone. The other members of the forum would be interested in what was going on, but they simply don't know about it, because they didn't happen to be there when the conversation was happening.

Now, it is of course possible to establish bridges, connectors, link-ups between forums. But in my experience they tend to be "hacky," made available pretty late; For some reason, the bridges just don't seem to work very well. This feeds into my newly revived "platformist" approach (rather than "side-system" approach) to the development of communication systems. The ability to generically extend a given system is always a good thing, but there are things that a given platform is just genuinely not good at. It reaches a fundamental limit, a breaking point. And I think that the world wide web as a platform is sort of reaching that platau point. I can forsee that the webapps on the world wide web are going to continue to grow in capabilities and strenghts. But I think th

You know, this conversation is really dumb. It's some kind of warped idea pissing match, and I'm not interested in participating anymore.

I think the idea of holding back a text until it's done is interesting and good. I've seen it before. I'm not convinced that I wouldn't like to see text as it's being written, or at least to have the option to see it as it's written.

I'll tell you why.

One day, I was writing a post for the communitywiki. A friend of mine sent me a Skype message; He was just curious about what I was up to, what I was thinking about, how I was doing. I texted back to him: "Well, actually, I'm working on a post you might be interest in." We agreed to open up a gobby session, and I copied and pasted my text into it. I continued writing my post, him looking over my shoulder.

I wrote something poorly, and he asked a question about it: "What do you mean by xyz?" He and I talked a bit in Skype IM, and then I realized the text was unclear. We talked about how to fix it, and then put the fix in place.

While I worked on the text below, I noticed that every now and then, he'd fix a spelling error he'd noticed. He'd also point an arrow and say, "What is this?" or "I don't think I agree here..." Things like that.

It was a good interaction. The classical problem with writing is that you can't get your audiences response to the writing in real time. This problem is now solved. It is rare in the material world that we are physically present with people who will be reading it at the same time. In the online world, this is actually easier to do; Place in the world doesn't matter so much.

There were some problems with the interaction though: It took entirely too long to negotiate gobby to make this a regular thing.

In most of our IRC meetings, we'd like to keep some schematic notes, and a record of the meeting. This requires that we negotiate a transfer to using a whiteboarding app (such as the Coccinella on the Jabber networks,) or to using gobby. There are problems such as so-and-so doesn't have Foo installed, or Bar installed, or whatever. And then there's the time it takes to get a group of people on the same page. Then there's the problem that the people who aren't around when we negotiate a transfer are "abandoned" - when we're talking in gobby, the folk in #onebigsoup on IRC don't see our words.

This is a problem because most of the time, the way we manage to get together and talk together is that 2 people happen to be around and make a conversation, and then later the other members notice that there is activity on the channel, and then tune in to see if they are interested. (I have a general strategy for improving with this kind of conversational tinderwood, I call it "OverHear." If you should happen to think it's a stupid idea, please don't let me know.)

Anyways- when we go into gobby, the "conversational tinderwood" is gone. The other members of the forum would be interested in what was going on, but they simply don't know about it, because they didn't happen to be there when the conversation was happening.

Now, it is of course possible to establish bridges, connectors, link-ups between forums. But in my experience they tend to be "hacky," made available pretty late; For some reason, the bridges just don't seem to work very well. This feeds into my newly revived "platformist" approach (rather than "side-system" approach) to the development of communication systems. The ability to generically extend a given system is always a good thing, but there are things that a given platform is just genuinely not good at. It reaches a fundamental limit, a breaking point. And I think that the world wide web as a platform is sort of reaching that platau point. I can forsee that the webapps on the world wide web are going to continue to grow in capabilities and strenghts. But I think th

Sorry for jumping on you like that; I'm just a little angry at having been so thoroughly misunderstood.

AHEM:

There are times in the universe when people want to interact live.

As it is, live interaction over the Internet sucks.

There is no good general-purpose interactive platform right now.

Croquet, Second Life-- these are neat places to make things and meet people, but you can't perform a business meeting there, you can't work on code together there, etc., etc.,.

Now, there is a loooonng continuum between "completely live interaction and expectations," and "a web where people send messages in bottles to one another over vast distances in time." That continuum is very long, and it's not at all clear where people will draw lines. Most likely, I believe, software will develop to cover and mediate the whole range of expressions.

Right now, due to the technology, it's almost entirely in the "sending messages in a bottle."

Now, if you believe people are inattentive and have some sort of mindset that says people need to concentrate, meditate, reflect more, not talk live, live slow, etc., etc., - whatever's going on in your personal life or that you observe going on in the social world, fine, fine, fine. I'm not going to bother arguing or talking with you about it right now.

If you're a software developer looking at the world of "what does technology enable, and not enable," then you're who I'm talking with. And surely you will agree: There's no good basically free technology for working live on code with others, having meetings over a share whiteboard, meeting other people who happen to be in the same space with you, etc., etc.,.

As evidence of demand for this stuff, I point you to all the bulletin board systems that tell you who else is online right now. As evidence for the demand for FOAF type stuff, I point you to the explosion of activity there, and I point you to Slashdot's own friend/foe system. If you want to see Wikipedia of the future, I point you to #wikipedia.

People want and need live interaction. We have not been giving it to them.

Technologists have been thinking AJAX is the way to enable this stuff, and making side systems to the web.

I used to be a strong proponent of the approach as well, but just recently I'm having second thoughts. Second Life can be humbling, and when I look ahead into the future, I realize just how archaic our web experience is right now, and how unsustainable the technical platform is. If you're not a web developer, I don't know how useful my post is for you. It's clearly not communicating to people, since they have (wrongly) imagined I think we're all going to be spending all day waiting for people to finish their blog entries.

Now again: If you're in the "slow down" "stop making technology" crowd, we can't have a conversation. If you're in the "computers = distraction = evil / info-overload worries" crowd, then let me say that the problem isn't the amount of communication that's the problem, (we have a deficit in successful communications, actually,) the problem is that the management of communications and the mediation of spaces is the problem.

In material life, we have all these mechanisms for communicating and realizing what kinds of loads people have and are carrying. We can just look at a person, and infer all this information, and make judgements, totally unconsciously. Without all the paralanguage, we can't do much.

Communicating paralanguage is an increase in communication. Just because it's not words, doesn't mean it's not communication. Back again to "the problem is organizing communications, not the amount of communication." That's where we get wikipedia and social bookmarking and all these things. Again, it's organizing communication,

Welcome to 2015.

You log onto the Internet. (Ha, ha! Scratch that.) You're on the Internet, as always. All cities are wired all the time, and there's hardly a device that doesn't speak with the net. Today's cell phones are as laughable as 9600 baud modems are today. New cell phones are capable of creating 3D models and textures from items- it's the most popular way of "uploading" physical artifacts into the 3D virtual world.

You have a moment, and are interested in seeing what your friends are up to. Vinnie's browsing the web, researching some papers on post-modern something-or-other. Minipi is reading a paper for his information architecture classes. Mattis in Germany is looking at some music band sites. You can see them transparently live, even though they are all over the planet.

You go up to the music band sites and see that not just Mattis is working on it, but others are as well. You strike up a conversation with Mattis about the music. (With your voice.) The other people nearby may listen in, they may not- they may instead opt to just read the speech-to-text'ed transcript which passively rolls by in the background.

Joel wants to know how I'm doing, he goes checks it out. He sees me talking with Mattis; He's not particularly interested in the conversation, so he won't butt in or knock on the door; Instead, he just slips me an instant message letting me know he's nearby. Mattis notices my pause, and sees that I've received a note. "Oh, sorry, Mattis, something really important just came up." I talk with Joel.

Joel is working on a paper, and I see where it is, mid-writing. He's working on it with another fellow, in real-time. He needs some expertise of mine for this particular part; Something important to me, and that he knew that, and wants my input on it. I read it over, make some edits. "Hmm," his friend says, and proposes some other changes. We talk about it. We notice that there are 5 shadow people, watching as we right. Some people are very interested in Joel's thoughts; They're having a conversation about what he's writing on the permiter.

The basic idea here is that we're going to enter the "World Live Web." It turns out that it's rather useful to see and be seen. There are tremendous things that are possible by networking people, and that means live interaction. Deferring communications all the time is interesting, but has some problems, especially in terms of mass organizing. One thing we will see are regularly scheduled "time windows." It'll be a temporal hangout. Like a meeting or appointment, but not necessarily as formal.

Now, if you want to play "invisible" and be a voyeur, then fine. If you don't want people to see you while you're writing, be my guest. You can be one of "the invisible people."

But a lot of us, we're going to participate in this new world.

I am actually sympathetic to the basic idea here: New platform.

I'm newly skeptical of the approach of endlessly creating side-systems on the web browser.

There are amazing things that are possible when you make a new platform for integrating ideas.

For example, we can envision a world where you can watch people writing blog posts as they write them. We can imagine working on documents together with others in real-time. We can imagine social networks, we can imagine shared web browsing. We can imagine going to a web page, and seeing other people who happen to be browsing the web page at the same time as well. We can imagine looking at them, seeing what their affiliations are; There are all these things. We have seen voice communication. Within 10 years, good voice synthesis will be coupled, and we'll be able to look and sound like anybody.

Now, what we haven't seen, even in our imaginations, is all this stuff working together. Integrated into one platform.

Doing this stuff piece-meal, a little bit at a time, on the edge of the network, isn't going to work. It's just not. It'd take forever. Building new standards into the existing network just takes forever. There is no design team. Nadah. Nothing.

Where we see the cool stuff happening, really, is in these large behemeouth new platform.

Now, sure, we can get some milage out of AJAX. We can do sophisticated things with that.

But are we really going to make a 3D world with live document editing, voice & synthesis, presence, infinite versioning on everything, avatars, the whole thing, yadda yadda yadda, using just AJAX? Within 10-15 years? Hell no! It takes at least at least 5 years to make a new specification pretty much standard amongst users. Even RSS aggregators have only 10% penetration amongst blog readers.

What does this mean? It means that a new platform is in the works. Whether you know it or not, a new platform is in the works. Which of the new upstarts is going to be it, remains to be seen.

Sure, sure, sure-- there will be gateways between the world of Vanilla HTML + AJAX into these new worlds.

At some point, you can make a computer render pictures of the new world, and ship them off in AJAX. You can even play Lemmings in the browser now. (Well, you could have...) But the new world is going to be built in the new world. It's not going to be built piecemeal out here in weblandia. When we use browsers to access it, it will be a window into that world, but it will not be that world.

I am actually sympathetic to the basic idea here: New platform.

I'm newly skeptical of the approach of endlessly creating side-systems on the web browser.

There are amazing things that are possible when you make a new platform for integrating ideas.

For example, we can envision a world where you can watch people writing blog posts as they write them. We can imagine working on documents together with others in real-time. We can imagine social networks, we can imagine shared web browsing. We can imagine going to a web page, and seeing other people who happen to be browsing the web page at the same time as well. We can imagine looking at them, seeing what their affiliations are; There are all these things. We have seen voice communication. Within 10 years, good voice synthesis will be coupled, and we'll be able to look and sound like anybody.

Now, what we haven't seen, even in our imaginations, is all this stuff working together. Integrated into one platform.

Doing this stuff piece-meal, a little bit at a time, on the edge of the network, isn't going to work. It's just not. It'd take forever. Building new standards into the existing network just takes forever. There is no design team. Nadah. Nothing.

Where we see the cool stuff happening, really, is in these large behemeouth new platform.

Now, sure, we can get some milage out of AJAX. We can do sophisticated things with that.

But are we really going to make a 3D world with live document editing, voice & synthesis, presence, infinite versioning on everything, avatars, the whole thing, yadda yadda yadda, using just AJAX? Within 10-15 years? Hell no! It takes at least at least 5 years to make a new specification pretty much standard amongst users. Even RSS aggregators have only 10% penetration amongst blog readers.

What does this mean? It means that a new platform is in the works. Whether you know it or not, a new platform is in the works. Which of the new upstarts is going to be it, remains to be seen.

Sure, sure, sure-- there will be gateways between the world of Vanilla HTML + AJAX into these new worlds.

At some point, you can make a computer render pictures of the new world, and ship them off in AJAX. You can even play Lemmings in the browser now. (Well, you could have...) But the new world is going to be built in the new world. It's not going to be built piecemeal out here in weblandia. When we use browsers to access it, it will be a window into that world, but it will not be that world.

I am actually sympathetic to the basic idea here: New platform.

I'm newly skeptical of the approach of endlessly creating side-systems on the web browser.

There are amazing things that are possible when you make a new platform for integrating ideas.

For example, we can envision a world where you can watch people writing blog posts as they write them. We can imagine working on documents together with others in real-time. We can imagine social networks, we can imagine shared web browsing. We can imagine going to a web page, and seeing other people who happen to be browsing the web page at the same time as well. We can imagine looking at them, seeing what their affiliations are; There are all these things. We have seen voice communication. Within 10 years, good voice synthesis will be coupled, and we'll be able to look and sound like anybody.

Now, what we haven't seen, even in our imaginations, is all this stuff working together. Integrated into one platform.

Doing this stuff piece-meal, a little bit at a time, on the edge of the network, isn't going to work. It's just not. It'd take forever. Building new standards into the existing network just takes forever. There is no design team. Nadah. Nothing.

Where we see the cool stuff happening, really, is in these large behemeouth new platform.

Now, sure, we can get some milage out of AJAX. We can do sophisticated things with that.

But are we really going to make a 3D world with live document editing, voice & synthesis, presence, infinite versioning on everything, avatars, the whole thing, yadda yadda yadda, using just AJAX? Within 10-15 years? Hell no! It takes at least at least 5 years to make a new specification pretty much standard amongst users. Even RSS aggregators have only 10% penetration amongst blog readers.

What does this mean? It means that a new platform is in the works. Whether you know it or not, a new platform is in the works. Which of the new upstarts is going to be it, remains to be seen.

Sure, sure, sure-- there will be gateways between the world of Vanilla HTML + AJAX into these new worlds.

At some point, you can make a computer render pictures of the new world, and ship them off in AJAX. You can even play Lemmings in the browser now. (Well, you could have...) But the new world is going to be built in the new world. It's not going to be built piecemeal out here in weblandia. When we use browsers to access it, it will be a window into that world, but it will not be that world.

• root nameservers are controlled by the private companies that host them (NASA, VeriSign, Cogent, US DoD, ...)
• ICANN keeps the official registry of names; the private companies with the nameservers decides to go along with ICANN's registry, but is not legally required to do so
• ICANN has one root name server, but only one
• the private companies have, in the past, rebuked ICANN - in particular, ICANN asked them to install specific private keys and to be granted root access; the companies said (basically) to take a hike
• Country-coded TLD's are not managed by ICANN; somebody else does that. (yes..?)

The biggest barrier to FLOSS usability is often overwhelming the user with too many options.

Solved problem. Just the distribution of the technique is taking time.

It's proven itself in GNOME: Look at a base GNOME install. It's got a clean user interface, simple user access for everyday things, consistency across apps.

The way it works is that they are super-selective at the distribution level, and they have a written set of documents that you have to conform with, in order to be included in the distro. If someone's out of conformance, but you want to be conformant, they send out a small team of people to help you solve the problems, and gain the honor of joining the distro.

How are the documents determined? There's a set of hackers who work on usability and user interface, and they put together the documents with company and community feedback. (If I understand correctly.)

It's worked, and it's worked very well. Now other groups are copying the method. In particular, if I read Planet KDE right, they're going to adopt this sort of organization as well.

The basic pattern is this:

OpenSource projects, hell, Open anything (I'm immediately thinking: "Clipart,") begins with a lot of scruffy stuff. You have broken technologies, over-configurable this, too much of that, too little of that, and it's all in one gigantic pile of stuff. This is the beginning of a concentration phase.

Then, with time, form starts to standardize, ritualize, and we start to see collections. Now, instead of people just contributing "just because," or having a million options "because someone might want it," or whatever- we start to see people targetting new higher level structures: "The GNOME Human Interface Guidelines," or the blah-blah interfacec, or whatever.

With time, these things are just assumed, and built upon, and are smooth.

So, this is basically a solved problem. About 4 years ago, everyone was sort of wondering, like you were: "Is it possible for hackers to make something with a spiffy and clean and user-friendly UI?"

It may not be as cool as OS X, but: GNOME has clearly proven that the organizational model works, and that hackers can make things that can shape into a nice user interface.

It's just a matter of spreading the knowledge of the technique, now, and adopting it.

It makes sense to me.

We're making an Internet Hive Mind.

It's started with commited group efforts like Free Software. As communications technology develops, we start seeing things like Wikipedia.

As it develops further, we will see things like the project-space network, and local economies and sharing networks. As it develops still further, local governments will be mediated over by well organized electronic communities online.

Really, if this all seems strange to you, you have no idea the power of communications technologies.

Before "wiki," a piece of software, there could be no wikipedia. After that piece of software, it's almost impossible for there not to be a wikipedia. Details could be different, but the basic idea is almost an inevitabilitiy.

We are not done. There's still a hoard of communications software in the pipes. We're just now getting our event systems online. We'll start seeing things like "OverHear," allowing you to hear your friends' public conversations, with voice even. As we get the ability to index the world's voice conversations (with voice-to-text software), we'll be able to ask, "Who in the last 5 minutes said this world," we'll see that the online world will become one gigantic OpenSpace conference. We'll see the conferences, we'll see the group affiliations, we'll see the projects, we'll see it all.

I predict that between 2015 and 2020, the Hive Mind (by some other name) will be a recognized and powerful force. It will also recognize itself and it's own power. We could call this the day that the Hive Mind achieves "self-awareness."

It may even have a military force- I don't know what else to call a gigantic networked mess of sympathetic hackers, chemists, biologists, and lawyers. It is not unthinkable that "the Internet" may become it's own "sovereign nation," of sorts, lack of an independent land be damned.

So, connecting the idea of the UN and the Internet is not all that strange. I mean, what else? What else could it possibly be?

Our next generation "communications software" isn't so much about making it so that messages can be sent from person to person in different ways, but about organizing the existing communications, and about organizing ourselves. We're putting in individual-to-group affiliations, and affiliations amongst groups with each other.

There's no reason to believe that our communications will stop networking and developing.

People do not have their attention on our trajectory. They see half the people downtown walking around with cell phones stuck to their ears, but they don't think that anything can "come next." But it will. There's much much more on the way.

The "Hive Mind" will look less rediculous, I think.

In 5 years, VoIP will be mature, and have basically taken over. Online group VoIP conferences may be primitive, but some ordinary people will be using them. Semantic web technologies like RDF will be in mainstream understanding and use (like XML right now), and our computers will be noticably "smarter" than the information desplay we have today. Tablet's will be cheap and accessible, and we'll tighten up the "I drew something"-to-"There it is on the web" loop. In short, our conversations will be full of napkin diagrams, Visual Language will take off beyond web comics. Our user interfaces will have transcended (finally) the box-ish interfaces, because graph data-structures have taken on new-found importance, and with the new interfaces, we'll see component lan

It makes sense to me.

We're making an Internet Hive Mind.

It's started with commited group efforts like Free Software. As communications technology develops, we start seeing things like Wikipedia.

As it develops further, we will see things like the project-space network, and local economies and sharing networks. As it develops still further, local governments will be mediated over by well organized electronic communities online.

Really, if this all seems strange to you, you have no idea the power of communications technologies.

Before "wiki," a piece of software, there could be no wikipedia. After that piece of software, it's almost impossible for there not to be a wikipedia. Details could be different, but the basic idea is almost an inevitabilitiy.

We are not done. There's still a hoard of communications software in the pipes. We're just now getting our event systems online. We'll start seeing things like "OverHear," allowing you to hear your friends' public conversations, with voice even. As we get the ability to index the world's voice conversations (with voice-to-text software), we'll be able to ask, "Who in the last 5 minutes said this world," we'll see that the online world will become one gigantic OpenSpace conference. We'll see the conferences, we'll see the group affiliations, we'll see the projects, we'll see it all.

I predict that between 2015 and 2020, the Hive Mind (by some other name) will be a recognized and powerful force. It will also recognize itself and it's own power. We could call this the day that the Hive Mind achieves "self-awareness."

It may even have a military force- I don't know what else to call a gigantic networked mess of sympathetic hackers, chemists, biologists, and lawyers. It is not unthinkable that "the Internet" may become it's own "sovereign nation," of sorts, lack of an independent land be damned.

So, connecting the idea of the UN and the Internet is not all that strange. I mean, what else? What else could it possibly be?

Our next generation "communications software" isn't so much about making it so that messages can be sent from person to person in different ways, but about organizing the existing communications, and about organizing ourselves. We're putting in individual-to-group affiliations, and affiliations amongst groups with each other.

There's no reason to believe that our communications will stop networking and developing.

People do not have their attention on our trajectory. They see half the people downtown walking around with cell phones stuck to their ears, but they don't think that anything can "come next." But it will. There's much much more on the way.

The "Hive Mind" will look less rediculous, I think.

In 5 years, VoIP will be mature, and have basically taken over. Online group VoIP conferences may be primitive, but some ordinary people will be using them. Semantic web technologies like RDF will be in mainstream understanding and use (like XML right now), and our computers will be noticably "smarter" than the information desplay we have today. Tablet's will be cheap and accessible, and we'll tighten up the "I drew something"-to-"There it is on the web" loop. In short, our conversations will be full of napkin diagrams, Visual Language will take off beyond web comics. Our user interfaces will have transcended (finally) the box-ish interfaces, because graph data-structures have taken on new-found importance, and with the new interfaces, we'll see component lan

It makes sense to me.

We're making an Internet Hive Mind.

It's started with commited group efforts like Free Software. As communications technology develops, we start seeing things like Wikipedia.

As it develops further, we will see things like the project-space network, and local economies and sharing networks. As it develops still further, local governments will be mediated over by well organized electronic communities online.

Really, if this all seems strange to you, you have no idea the power of communications technologies.

Before "wiki," a piece of software, there could be no wikipedia. After that piece of software, it's almost impossible for there not to be a wikipedia. Details could be different, but the basic idea is almost an inevitabilitiy.

We are not done. There's still a hoard of communications software in the pipes. We're just now getting our event systems online. We'll start seeing things like "OverHear," allowing you to hear your friends' public conversations, with voice even. As we get the ability to index the world's voice conversations (with voice-to-text software), we'll be able to ask, "Who in the last 5 minutes said this world," we'll see that the online world will become one gigantic OpenSpace conference. We'll see the conferences, we'll see the group affiliations, we'll see the projects, we'll see it all.

I predict that between 2015 and 2020, the Hive Mind (by some other name) will be a recognized and powerful force. It will also recognize itself and it's own power. We could call this the day that the Hive Mind achieves "self-awareness."

It may even have a military force- I don't know what else to call a gigantic networked mess of sympathetic hackers, chemists, biologists, and lawyers. It is not unthinkable that "the Internet" may become it's own "sovereign nation," of sorts, lack of an independent land be damned.

So, connecting the idea of the UN and the Internet is not all that strange. I mean, what else? What else could it possibly be?

Our next generation "communications software" isn't so much about making it so that messages can be sent from person to person in different ways, but about organizing the existing communications, and about organizing ourselves. We're putting in individual-to-group affiliations, and affiliations amongst groups with each other.

There's no reason to believe that our communications will stop networking and developing.

People do not have their attention on our trajectory. They see half the people downtown walking around with cell phones stuck to their ears, but they don't think that anything can "come next." But it will. There's much much more on the way.

The "Hive Mind" will look less rediculous, I think.

In 5 years, VoIP will be mature, and have basically taken over. Online group VoIP conferences may be primitive, but some ordinary people will be using them. Semantic web technologies like RDF will be in mainstream understanding and use (like XML right now), and our computers will be noticably "smarter" than the information desplay we have today. Tablet's will be cheap and accessible, and we'll tighten up the "I drew something"-to-"There it is on the web" loop. In short, our conversations will be full of napkin diagrams, Visual Language will take off beyond web comics. Our user interfaces will have transcended (finally) the box-ish interfaces, because graph data-structures have taken on new-found importance, and with the new interfaces, we'll see component lan

It makes sense to me.

We're making an Internet Hive Mind.

It's started with commited group efforts like Free Software. As communications technology develops, we start seeing things like Wikipedia.

As it develops further, we will see things like the project-space network, and local economies and sharing networks. As it develops still further, local governments will be mediated over by well organized electronic communities online.

Really, if this all seems strange to you, you have no idea the power of communications technologies.

Before "wiki," a piece of software, there could be no wikipedia. After that piece of software, it's almost impossible for there not to be a wikipedia. Details could be different, but the basic idea is almost an inevitabilitiy.

We are not done. There's still a hoard of communications software in the pipes. We're just now getting our event systems online. We'll start seeing things like "OverHear," allowing you to hear your friends' public conversations, with voice even. As we get the ability to index the world's voice conversations (with voice-to-text software), we'll be able to ask, "Who in the last 5 minutes said this world," we'll see that the online world will become one gigantic OpenSpace conference. We'll see the conferences, we'll see the group affiliations, we'll see the projects, we'll see it all.

I predict that between 2015 and 2020, the Hive Mind (by some other name) will be a recognized and powerful force. It will also recognize itself and it's own power. We could call this the day that the Hive Mind achieves "self-awareness."

It may even have a military force- I don't know what else to call a gigantic networked mess of sympathetic hackers, chemists, biologists, and lawyers. It is not unthinkable that "the Internet" may become it's own "sovereign nation," of sorts, lack of an independent land be damned.

So, connecting the idea of the UN and the Internet is not all that strange. I mean, what else? What else could it possibly be?

Our next generation "communications software" isn't so much about making it so that messages can be sent from person to person in different ways, but about organizing the existing communications, and about organizing ourselves. We're putting in individual-to-group affiliations, and affiliations amongst groups with each other.

There's no reason to believe that our communications will stop networking and developing.

People do not have their attention on our trajectory. They see half the people downtown walking around with cell phones stuck to their ears, but they don't think that anything can "come next." But it will. There's much much more on the way.

The "Hive Mind" will look less rediculous, I think.

In 5 years, VoIP will be mature, and have basically taken over. Online group VoIP conferences may be primitive, but some ordinary people will be using them. Semantic web technologies like RDF will be in mainstream understanding and use (like XML right now), and our computers will be noticably "smarter" than the information desplay we have today. Tablet's will be cheap and accessible, and we'll tighten up the "I drew something"-to-"There it is on the web" loop. In short, our conversations will be full of napkin diagrams, Visual Language will take off beyond web comics. Our user interfaces will have transcended (finally) the box-ish interfaces, because graph data-structures have taken on new-found importance, and with the new interfaces, we'll see component lan

It makes sense to me.

We're making an Internet Hive Mind.

It's started with commited group efforts like Free Software. As communications technology develops, we start seeing things like Wikipedia.

As it develops further, we will see things like the project-space network, and local economies and sharing networks. As it develops still further, local governments will be mediated over by well organized electronic communities online.

Really, if this all seems strange to you, you have no idea the power of communications technologies.

Before "wiki," a piece of software, there could be no wikipedia. After that piece of software, it's almost impossible for there not to be a wikipedia. Details could be different, but the basic idea is almost an inevitabilitiy.

We are not done. There's still a hoard of communications software in the pipes. We're just now getting our event systems online. We'll start seeing things like "OverHear," allowing you to hear your friends' public conversations, with voice even. As we get the ability to index the world's voice conversations (with voice-to-text software), we'll be able to ask, "Who in the last 5 minutes said this world," we'll see that the online world will become one gigantic OpenSpace conference. We'll see the conferences, we'll see the group affiliations, we'll see the projects, we'll see it all.

I predict that between 2015 and 2020, the Hive Mind (by some other name) will be a recognized and powerful force. It will also recognize itself and it's own power. We could call this the day that the Hive Mind achieves "self-awareness."

It may even have a military force- I don't know what else to call a gigantic networked mess of sympathetic hackers, chemists, biologists, and lawyers. It is not unthinkable that "the Internet" may become it's own "sovereign nation," of sorts, lack of an independent land be damned.

So, connecting the idea of the UN and the Internet is not all that strange. I mean, what else? What else could it possibly be?

Our next generation "communications software" isn't so much about making it so that messages can be sent from person to person in different ways, but about organizing the existing communications, and about organizing ourselves. We're putting in individual-to-group affiliations, and affiliations amongst groups with each other.

There's no reason to believe that our communications will stop networking and developing.

People do not have their attention on our trajectory. They see half the people downtown walking around with cell phones stuck to their ears, but they don't think that anything can "come next." But it will. There's much much more on the way.

The "Hive Mind" will look less rediculous, I think.

In 5 years, VoIP will be mature, and have basically taken over. Online group VoIP conferences may be primitive, but some ordinary people will be using them. Semantic web technologies like RDF will be in mainstream understanding and use (like XML right now), and our computers will be noticably "smarter" than the information desplay we have today. Tablet's will be cheap and accessible, and we'll tighten up the "I drew something"-to-"There it is on the web" loop. In short, our conversations will be full of napkin diagrams, Visual Language will take off beyond web comics. Our user interfaces will have transcended (finally) the box-ish interfaces, because graph data-structures have taken on new-found importance, and with the new interfaces, we'll see component lan

It makes sense to me.

We're making an Internet Hive Mind.

It's started with commited group efforts like Free Software. As communications technology develops, we start seeing things like Wikipedia.

As it develops further, we will see things like the project-space network, and local economies and sharing networks. As it develops still further, local governments will be mediated over by well organized electronic communities online.

Really, if this all seems strange to you, you have no idea the power of communications technologies.

Before "wiki," a piece of software, there could be no wikipedia. After that piece of software, it's almost impossible for there not to be a wikipedia. Details could be different, but the basic idea is almost an inevitabilitiy.

We are not done. There's still a hoard of communications software in the pipes. We're just now getting our event systems online. We'll start seeing things like "OverHear," allowing you to hear your friends' public conversations, with voice even. As we get the ability to index the world's voice conversations (with voice-to-text software), we'll be able to ask, "Who in the last 5 minutes said this world," we'll see that the online world will become one gigantic OpenSpace conference. We'll see the conferences, we'll see the group affiliations, we'll see the projects, we'll see it all.

I predict that between 2015 and 2020, the Hive Mind (by some other name) will be a recognized and powerful force. It will also recognize itself and it's own power. We could call this the day that the Hive Mind achieves "self-awareness."

It may even have a military force- I don't know what else to call a gigantic networked mess of sympathetic hackers, chemists, biologists, and lawyers. It is not unthinkable that "the Internet" may become it's own "sovereign nation," of sorts, lack of an independent land be damned.

So, connecting the idea of the UN and the Internet is not all that strange. I mean, what else? What else could it possibly be?

Our next generation "communications software" isn't so much about making it so that messages can be sent from person to person in different ways, but about organizing the existing communications, and about organizing ourselves. We're putting in individual-to-group affiliations, and affiliations amongst groups with each other.

There's no reason to believe that our communications will stop networking and developing.

People do not have their attention on our trajectory. They see half the people downtown walking around with cell phones stuck to their ears, but they don't think that anything can "come next." But it will. There's much much more on the way.

The "Hive Mind" will look less rediculous, I think.

In 5 years, VoIP will be mature, and have basically taken over. Online group VoIP conferences may be primitive, but some ordinary people will be using them. Semantic web technologies like RDF will be in mainstream understanding and use (like XML right now), and our computers will be noticably "smarter" than the information desplay we have today. Tablet's will be cheap and accessible, and we'll tighten up the "I drew something"-to-"There it is on the web" loop. In short, our conversations will be full of napkin diagrams, Visual Language will take off beyond web comics. Our user interfaces will have transcended (finally) the box-ish interfaces, because graph data-structures have taken on new-found importance, and with the new interfaces, we'll see component lan

With voice software, you can already speak in real-time, conference style. I think Skype supports 5 people.

With speech-to-text, you could log all conversation to IRC.

Then you could have search engines that search *all conversation within the last 5 minutes, world-wide.*

Well, at least all conversation that was okay with being public.

So you could say, "Show me all conversations that are going right now about Python, and immediately find the people talking about Python, wherever they were.

One step towards the HiveMind.