It has only been 6,500 days since Tim Berners-Lee created the first ever Web page. In contrast, the achievement of the Web has far outpaced the expectations. Most people only expected the Web to be a better version of television. Clearly, today, the Web is far beyond being a better tv.
During its infancy, the Web was all about linking one computer with another to build a network of networks. The perceived value in the Web then shifted to the sharing of documents, and then gradually evolved to sharing links.
The next generation of the Web, which we may call by any name we choose -- Web 2.0, or Web 10.0, or the Semantic Web -- will be a more conscious, intelligent, sentient manifestation that is aware of the purpose and nature of data. The Web will evolve to a mechanism for sharing data; a finer resolution, a more elemental unit of information than the current one. We're headed to a Web of data, where data will be the heart, and applications will move to the 'cloud'.
Kevin Kelly, noted author and editor of the Wired magazine, believes that the Web, in the next 6,500 days, will be as far removed from and beyond the Web we see today, as the current state of the Web is from what they speculated back at its beginning.
For 25 years Kevin Kelly has been a participant in, and reporter on, the culture of technology. Based in his studio in Pacifica, California, he immerses himself in the long-term trends and social consequences of technology. Kevin Kelly is currently Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He helped launch Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor until January 1999. During Kelly’s tenure as editor at Wired, the magazine won two National Magazine Awards (the industry’s equivalent of two Oscars). He is currently editor and publisher of the popular Cool Tools, True Film, and Street Use websites. From 1984-1990 Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review, a journal of unorthodox technical news. He co-founded the ongoing Hackers’ Conference, and was involved with the launch of the WELL, a pioneering online service started in 1985. A few years ago he started a scientific campaign to catalog all the living species of life on earth. This project has morphed into developing a web page for every species in an Encyclopedia of Life.
Kevin Kelly has authored the best-selling New Rules for the New Economy, and the classic book on decentralized emergent systems, Out of Control (called “required reading for all executives” by Fortune). In addition he writes for prominent publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Time, Harpers, Science, GQ, and Esquire. Earlier in life he was a photographer in remote parts of Asia (instead of going to college), publishing his photographs in national magazines and recently in the photo art book Asia Grace. Currently he is a charter board member of the Long Now Foundation which is building a monumental clock that will tick for 10,000 years.
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