Some terrific new explorations and explanations of Web 2.0 have come out this week. I really enjoyed Dan Saffer's The Web 2.0 Experience Continuum in the latest issue of Adaptive Path's online newsletter (incidentally these are the thought leading folks that coined the term Ajax and are behind the buzz generating Measure Map among other things). Along the way, Dan uses one of my favorite qutoes from William Gibson, "The future is here. It's just unevenly distributed." But specifically, he explores something I've been discussing with a few folks including SOA expert Jeff Schneider and that's how to lower the impedance between parts of the Web, particularly between services. Jeff made much recently about something he calls the tolerance continuum, which he described to me as:
"The durable storage or transaction layer (bottom) is low, while the presentation or user layer (top) is high. Realization that the tolerance continuum exists enables the reduction in structure (rules, constraints, heavy protocols). Reduction in structure enables ‘tolerance on the edge’, ‘compose-ability’ and ultimately, the use of information in unintended manners (increased consumption scenarios)."
In a very similar vein Dan specifically talks about an experience continuum where unstructured content enables a web less about places and nouns but about verbs and activities (a great citation of Ross Mayfield):
"The tools we’ll use to find, read, filter, use, mix, remix, and connect us to the Internet will have to be smarter and do a lot more work than the ones we have now. Part of that work is in formatting. Who and what determines how something looks and works? On the unstructured side of the continuum, perhaps only a veneer of form will remain. “Looks” will be an uneasy mix of the data and the tools we use to view it. Visual design is moving away from its decentralized locations on websites. Indeed, design is becoming centralized in the tools and methods we use to view and interact with content. Firefox users can already use extensions like Adblock, and especially Greasemonkey, to change the look of the Web pages they visit. RSS readers let users customize how they want to view feeds from a variety of sources. Soon, expect to see this type of customization happening with bits of functionality as well as content."
My personal prediction is that low impedance mechanisms will flourish dramatically in coming years the closer you get to the point of use. Back-end infrastructure will get both radically decentralized but remain essentially as formal and structured as it is today. Expect to see interesting things happen at the points where you cross over from one to the other. Tragically though, is that the future is arriving at such breakneck speed that equilibrium across our culture doesn't have time to take. Dan notes that many people he talks to about the Internet still don't know what a blog is.
The second item that caught my eye was John Battelle's article this week in the New York Times, titled Building a Better Boom. Organizer of the Web 2.0 Conference among other things and a respected member of the Internet community, John dismisses the existence of a second Internet bubble outright citing the lack of IPOs and notes that most Web 2.0 companies are taking the acquisition route instead. More significantly however, this article is one of the first in mainstream media which introduces Web 2.0 as an explicit term and John provides good examples and coherent explanation accessible to the general public. John does an good job explaining a big topic and uses a very light hand, without hype or buzzwords. A few dozen more articles like this and you'll finally be able to mention Web 2.0 in some circles without taking 10 minutes to explain it first.
Is unstructured content and locationless functionality the future of Web 2.0?
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Or... "Is unstructured content and locationless functionality Web 3.0?"
