I found this on blather, the excellent Dublin site
Blather interviewee Bruce Sterling pens his last wired.com article:
"The future of the Internet lies not with institutions but with individuals. Low-cost connections will proliferate, encouraging creativity, collaboration, and telecommuting. The Net itself will recede into the background. If you're under 21, you likely don't care much about any supposed difference between virtual and actual, online and off. That's because the two realms are penetrating each other; Google Earth mingles with Google Maps, and daily life shows up on Flickr. Like the real world, the Net will be increasingly international and decreasingly reliant on English. It will be wrapped in a Chinese kung fu outfit, intoned in an Indian accent, oozing Brazilian sex appeal."
Here's the full article
This seems to tie in to some of the ideas expressed here by James Higham and friends...
the idea of co-operation between a loose network of small blogs...
I'd even go as far as wondering whether the internet itself is "dead" - do people actually still spend hours browsing randomly like they used to? I know that for the last couple of years I've pretty much only gone to sites I already know, or on the recomendations of others.
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3 comments:
Dead? Surely it's alive <fx: lightning>: whereas people might just have clicked links and read, passively, now there's the chance to recommend and comment.
As to your last point, I'd become increasingly complacent with the regular handful of blogs I visit. What I hope Blogpower will do is increase my exposure to quality blogs that write from a very different perspective to my own, and, indeed, produce recommendations for bloggers I wouldn't consider fellow travellers.
Mind you, I can still get caught up in Wikipedia for hours...
I'm the same with Wikipedia, it's why I started a Blog.
You're right about the new possibilities opened up by increased interactivity and word of mouth - but I think it is a case of the internet is dead, long live the internet - it's a new intergrated system. What Sterling is saying and I agree, is that the internet used to be this mysterious seperate reality now it's just another thing, like telephones and television - a normal everyday part of our lives...
I think the article is just another example of a writer taking lots of words to state something very obvious.
"The internet has become very popular especially as a tool rather than just a pastime."
How profound!
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