• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
 
Web 2.0 - Singularity to Networks!
How Web 2.0 will reshape information and its management.
The transition of Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 is an evolution from micro to macro, fromsingularity to networks. In a way, if Web 1.0 was the evolution of web capabilitiesin siloed clusters, Web 2.0 is the first real glimpse of its power due to networks.
wiki blog facebook mashup podcast
Contents
Ruby on Rails 
Nomenclature and Beyond
 
Web 2.0 
is another title, in a long line of titles, taking advantage of the feel good factor attachedto a second home coming. To be more specific; itsthe ideal comeback name for theresurrection of the internet after the Dot-Com burst occurred, and alldoom and damnation wasforecast for the web.Officially, Web 2.0 was coinedbyTim O'Reily, then popularized by the mainstream media andeventually spawned many suffixed version 2s in its wake. Even by any other name, it would not diminish theradical change thathappened. What was this change and what does it foretell?Web2.0, its components, its meaning, its transition from web1.0 -all deal with one thing - information and its flow.Information turned commodity from the time man first started communicating and became its consumer. Most of the era after the industrial revolution - and some might say before that too - put a price on information and so itsbeen a constant but steady drive to perfect and find better waysto trade this commodity.From word of mouth towritten form, from simple words to complex diagrams; the methods to carry these words and sounds and picturesand actions have evolved as have their carriers.The arrival of the Personal Computer was heralded as another in the line ofrevolutionary cariers.Powerfull yetcompletely subversive to human inputs, a single unit could outperform humans in certain areas with amazingnonchalance. But at the end, that was what it was - a single unit. Eventually its real power would emerge onlywhen more than one unit were combined or networked. Just as the true purpose and value of information lies inits
flow 
– the device's value progressed as it started connecting to other devices.Enter the Web, or to be moreprecise Web 1.0.As a way to collect and consume information,Web 1.0 had content and relevance,but as an
interactive
medium,it needed better delivery mechanisms and better form. This state of the web where function was mismatched withform, and delivery meant dial-up, heralded a change.To borrow a real life example, the Wild Wild West inNorth America, at the time of the pilgrims, was a land whoseresources became productive due to two main changes – Railroads and Settlers. The connectivity, accessibilityand networking that the Rails provided, drove the settlers in. And the more settlers came in, the more connectionsoccurred.Similarly, Web 1.0 always had potential, but it is now, with Web2.0 that the potential is finally being realized. WithFlash and Ajax, Social Worlds and Virtual worlds; Mashupsand Wikis, Podcastsand WebCasts;the web isliterally being defined and populated by its networked users... who are settling in droves.In a way, Web 1.0 was a precursor -a laying down of the wires, protocols, systems, guidelines and possibilities,and Web 2.0 is the realization of those possibilities; where instantaneous connection, communicationandcollaboration are its
sine qua non.
 
Moore, Metcalfe and Kurzweil
 By conventional wisdom, the whole is almost always greater than the sum of its parts.For the Web this ismultiplied many folds. Take the main players -the users, the computational elements at their disposal, and theweb.
Gordon Moore
famously predicted 40 years back that the number of inexpensive computer transistors on a chip
 
Page 1 of 3Web 2.0 - Singularity to Networks! - a knol by M.Ishak Ziaee1/26/2009http://knol.google.com/k/mishak-ziaee/web-20-singularity-to-networks/13baf6hpaj1ao/2
 
will doubleevery two years. And it has been true ever since. The power held in the palm of one's hand today - inPDAs, Cellphones or Laptops - is so much more than what resided in top secret research facilities, filling a wholeroom, just a decade ago. And as Moore's law predicts, the pace of related innovations follows through. Adoptionand Inclusion do not remain an issue any more - everyone’s logged in!
Robert M. Metcalfe,
co-inventor of theEthernet, and founder of3Comphrsed his Metcalfe Law saying"
The valueof a network is proportional to the square of the number of 
users
of the system (n²)".
Pointing out the similaritybetween a human neural network and the Web he further said
"Just like a synapse between two neurons;thewebspreads ideas from one person to another, connecting one brain to the second".
Over the course of time both these laws have helped shape technologies; physical hardware constantly getssmaller and cheaper to produce, fuelling more uses/users for devices - that’s Moore's Law. On the other hand,software is becoming increasingly user-driven, user-centric and user-friendly - making it easier for Networks toexpand and evolve between these technologies- that's Metcalfe's Law.Another pioneer, this time in artificial intelligence -
Raymond Kurzweil -
estimated that the humanbrain's
networked 
intelligence
produces the equivalent of 10
16
computations per second.In fact its superiority ispricesely
not 
because of its neural capabilities, but because of its networking capabilities. In other words, thebrain is 10
6
x10
4
, or 10
10
, times smarter than it should be, all because it is networked. As a sum of its parts, Web 2.0 is a more composite and functionally relevant tool today than ever before. Andbecause this kind of connectivity lets you extend beyond geography and time, the talent pool at itsreach isphenomenal, with collaborations and connections that can happen across geography, age, sex or race. In noother era of human civilization has there ever been a platform -for ideas to be shared or conversations to be had-with such ease and instantaneousness andwithout the other senses getting in the way.The transition of Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 is its evolution from micro to macro andfrom singularity to networks. In away, if Web 1.0 was the evolution of web capabilities in siloed clusters, Web 2.0 is the first real glimpse of itspower due tonetworks.
The Big Picture
 Picture this - the biggest collective memory of ideas, actions, thoughts and feelings. Web 2.0 issoon becomingthe best realization of a collective memory of human history and endeavor. Of course, that's overstating it a bit,but let the data speak - a Terabyte used to be big until recently - well,
YouTube
contains 530 Terabytes of videosas of end 2008. Hold the press! - We have the Peta Byte? That’s the amount of data that is processed by
Google
 servers
every 72 
minutes! The English
Wikipedia
is 25 times bigger than the next largest English-languageencyclopedia. As the July edition of 
Wired 
termed it - “The
quest for knowledge used to begin with Grand Theories. Now it begins with massive amounts of data. Welcome, to the Petabyte Age!" 
 In this age of information overload; the basic flow of information - top-down since time immemorial withgatekeepers managing the flow of information - is changing, and fast. In whichever field you look at - science, art,literature, commerce, and entertainment, the browser has changed the dynamics. Imagine a million minds with abillion ideas able to express, connect, collaborate and then create.In the book "
The End Of Science: Facing The Limits Of Knowledge In The Twilight Of The Scientific Age-
JohnHorgan",spoke to top living scientists who surmised about their dilemma of grappling with the reality of a slowdown in discovery and inventions.So when the fundamental source of empirically derived knowledge looks likedrying up, where do you go?
The Rock in the Pond
 Was the Web a different place before
Google? 
It might just be true. You had search engines and content butsomehow you could never get what you were looking for because you couldn't exactly search, or searchexactly!Google put an end to that, allowing users to talk to the net, for what
they 
wanted, without the pretense of being all things to everyone.It was the first and still is the best marriage of form to content, and interestingly, when Google first came online,the interface was a big draw and design enthusiasts as well as professionals commented on its Apple likeausterity. The fact was, the makers of Google did not know HTML, and just wanted a quick interface (3).Nevertheless from that hermetic visage, whathasspawned is a whole new way of experiencing the web. Since itbecame the de-facto
Yellow Pages
for the web, everyone started setting shop and waited to be found. If 
Microsoft 
 represented the flag bearer of the Web 1.0 world -standardized, Static, Desktop bound,
Google
is the mastheadfor Web 2.0. And more than that, its presence and story have been inspirational to individuals with nothing toshow but ideas.The effect of all this, has been a phenomenal lowering of the entry barriers to putting your '
stuff 
' online, andvirtually, new technologies being born a minute. The impact has been so ruthless in some areas wheremiddlemen operated that there was literally a wipeout - ask the ticketing agents, and teh real estate agents! ButGoogle could not do this alone, sureit provided a mechanism to search but for the web2.0 interactive elementwhat was needed was a relevant form for the tremendous potential.The Wild Wild Web needed Rails. Enter Ruby
 
Page 2 of 3Web 2.0 - Singularity to Networks! - a knol by M.Ishak Ziaee1/26/2009http://knol.google.com/k/mishak-ziaee/web-20-singularity-to-networks/13baf6hpaj1ao/2
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...