The Next 5000 Days on the Web
5,000 days ago, at the beginning of the web, could we have predicted easy access to satellite images… for free? Probably not. Most pundits guessed that the web would evolve into some form of television, only better. What are we likely to see in the next 5,000 days? Kevin Kelly, an Editor at Wired Magazine, attempts to guess the future of the internet. Is he right? Time will tell. But his predictions & insights are interesting regardless of their accuracy.
Stages: Where We Are Now
Kelly breaks the growth of the Internet into these stages:
- Linking computers – the beginning of the Internet.
- Linking pages – the stage we’re currently in.
- Linking data – the stage we’re entering. Attaching other devices to the web, starting with phones.
Kelly believes that we are entering a stage where every unit of information, every bit, will be part of the web. True? Time will tell.