Time To Take the Internet Seriously

santosh maharshi passes along an article on Edge by David Gelernter, the man who (according to the introduction) predicted the Web and first described cloud computing; he's also a Unabomber survivor. Gelernter makes 35 predictions and assertions, some brilliant, some dubious. "6. We know that the Internet creates 'information overload,' a problem with two parts: increasing number of information sources and increasing information flow per source. The first part is harder: it's more difficult to understand five people speaking simultaneously than one person talking fast — especially if you can tell the one person to stop temporarily, or go back and repeat. Integrating multiple information sources is crucial to solving information overload. Blogs and other anthology-sites integrate information from many sources. But we won't be able to solve the overload problem until each Internet user can choose for himself what sources to integrate, and can add to this mix the most important source of all: his own personal information — his email and other messages, reminders and documents of all sorts. To accomplish this, we merely need to turn the whole Cybersphere on its side, so that time instead of space is the main axis. ... 14. The structure called a cyberstream or lifestream is better suited to the Internet than a conventional website because it shows information-in-motion, a rushing flow of fresh information instead of a stagnant pool."

Comments

Re:condition: buzzword alert

[zappepcs]

Exactly, kind of, I think.

The Internet is not a thing like the 'winter olympics' or recording industry. The Internet is the system of communications systems which allow the transfer of information (as well as aggregation, falsification, and overload of). It changes the source of information for those who regularly access it when compared to the time before the Internet.

What needs to be discussed is not cyber this, or virtual that, but how users use information. Lets face it, for a large portion of the population the phrase 'use information' is rather optimistic. Aggregating information, presenting it in a way that is both intuitive and useful is something of a holy grail. We've seen many attempts to do things like this, and each of them has their fans and foes. What is being suggested is essentially that we all need to have one set of cultural values. Looks good on paper, but it makes a huge mess of things in real life.

Then again, look at Microsoft Windows. How may people do you know that think this is how computers are supposed to work, and anything not like Windows is weird?

A single cultural viewpoint is wrong.