Future Web Trends
One of the reasons we started this blog was to help prove that we really did have an understanding of what was going on and could predict or make educated guesses on what was happening, what could be happening, and what should be happening with the Internet and Internet technologies. In the last year-and-a-half, we’ve had our moments, like mentioning that YouTube was going to create a mobil platform weeks before YouTube announced it was developing a mobile platform, although I’m sure that many of these moments were not that deeply profound for others within the industry. Today, Rob forwarded me a link for an article on 10 Future Web Trends.
The article immediately establishes that we are in the midst of Web 2.0, and with that comes collaboration/aggregation, mash-ups, RSS, and online media. This is the now. The future, as it is presented, isn’t that profound. The semantic web (machines talking to machines) and artificial intelligence (AI) took the number one and two billing on the list, and I would suggest that these are no-brainers. Everyone who watched Terminator or read Asimov’s collection of short stories is familiar with these ideas, and although it can probably be stated as the inevitable reality, these types of interpretations shouldn’t be ignored.
Listed at three and four, Virtual Worlds and Mobile should again be grouped together; with more people integrating their own lives with their virtual, Internet lives, and more people adopting mobile platforms (ie. cellphones, Blackberries, and iPhones), it is only natural that development would move to tend to these desires. Virtual Worlds, however, are as old as the Internet itself, and these are merely updated versions of Ultima Online, for example, and Mobile was always limited by the technology available, not the desire to use it how we are finally able to.
It is an interesting article, and although I think it’s a good interpretation/representation of future web trends, it doesn’t really make any groundbreaking statements or predictions. At least not for those who are deeply rooted in such things - probably quite similar to my own writing, I imagine.