It's a quiet Friday at the library, which means I have some much appreciated reading and thinking time. A few weeks ago I came across the following video of Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired magazine talking about the "next 5,000 days of the Internet", and ever since many of his comments have been floating around the back of my mind. I've been a fan of Kevin's ever since I read his New Rules for the New Economy nearly 10 years ago. He was the first person I encountered who could explain (in language even I could understand!) why the Internet was not "TV but better".
In the video Kevin notes that the World Wide Web (not the Internet, which has much older roots, but the system of URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) that allows us to find and link to documents and pages in the vast sea of digital information that the computer era has spawned)as we know it today is not even 5,000 days old!
After giving a mind-bending account of the current state of the Web in terms of its storage and processing capacity, Kevin gives his view as to what the next 5,000 days and beyond will bring, and as when I first read "New Rules" a decade ago I had several jolts of recognition. When he talked about shoes as "chips with heels" I couldn't help think about how much I love my Nike+ Ipod - essentially a chip you insert in your shoe that tracks your walking/running and uploads the data to a personalized webpage...heaven sent for someone with obsessive compulsive tendencies like me but also a wonderful example of not only the convergence of the physical and the digital, but of the evolution of the web to a "me-centric" network of information.
On a less frivolous note, however, some of the concepts and issues he raises are things librarians need to really think about.
How will we deliver services in a world where the digital and the physical converge? What will our collections look like? (I'll write another day on some interesting ideas put forth by Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive related to this topic.)
If "web 3.0" moves us from a network of "pages" to a network in which every item, idea, and word can be linked what does that mean for an organization like PVLD who sees its core mission as "Connecting People, Information, and Ideas"?
How will we meet people's growing expectation of personalization of services and products? And what does Kevin's assertion that "the price of personalization is transparency" mean for our deeply held values and beliefs around privacy?
Important questions, and I don't pretend to know the answers. I do know, however, that this thing we call the "web" has to large degree taken on a life of its own as more and more people, devices, and bits of information are caught up in it....so trying to change its course is almost certainly impossible. I don't know whether all of Kevin Kelly's predictions will come to pass. He is, however, someone whse intellect and perspective I respect. With that in mind, watch the video and let me know what you think!
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