| 
|
A next step is the move to universal authorship, in
which everyone involved in an area can contribute to the
electronic representation of the group knowledge. -
1991
~~~
If it's good people, people will
want to buy it, and money is the way they vote on what
they want. I believe that system is the best one we have,
so if it's right, sure people are going to make
money. People will make money building software, selling
information, and more importantly doing all kinds of
"real" business which happens to work much
better because the Web is there to make their work
easier. - 1994
~~~
I hope that the concept of the Web
as an information space independent of hardware type and
location will continue to exist ... I hope we will be
smart enough to allow this evolution and never have to
suddenly stop, put a "7" in front of all the
URIs, and call it something else. - 1994
~~~
Reasonable competition speeds the
pace of innovation. Companies will promote the
proprietary aspects of their browsers and applications,
and they should. But the navigation of the Web has to be
open. If the day comes when you need six browsers on your
machine, the World Wide Web will no longer be the World
Wide Web. - 1995
~~~
I had (and still have) a dream that
the Web could be less of a television channel and more of
an interactive sea of shared knowledge. I imagine it
immersing us as a warm, friendly environment made of the
things we and our friends have seen, heard, believe or
have figured out. I would like it to bring our friends
and colleagues closer, in that by working on this
knowledge together we can come to better understandings
... The dream is that if everybody works from day to day
using the Web as their notebook, mailer and calendar ...
then the scaling problems of teams and organizations
could somehow be solved. This is a dream. - 1995
~~~
The truth is I haven't the
faintest idea where it is going to be in five years'
time. When the Web as an information space becomes an
assumption, then it will be time for the next revolution.
In five years' time the next revolution may have
happened on top of the Web. It will happen within the
Web. It may be mobile code. It may be robots working for
you. It may be people finding ways of interacting
politically. - 1995
~~~
What I see as interesting is the
possibility that the Web will become something driven by
its data rather than by its programs. What you see on
your desktop won't be a function of what you spend at
the store for shrink-wrapped software. It will be a
function of where you have been browsing. As you browse
you will discover interesting objects and you will be
able to download the code to make those objects come to
life, and behave on your screen or in a 3-D space in a
way that an author or artist intended. - 1995
~~~
The next thing for the Web is the
death of the concept of the killer application. It will
be killer content. The idea of an application will
disappear over time. There is one possibility ... There
will be a whole mingling of components of software which
won't be grouped into lumps like applications. Even
the operating system will become less significant. What
you will be interested in in your operating system is
something which will be small and fast and get out of the
way quick. - 1995
~~~
It could be that some scientific
field will be the first to be sufficiently disciplined to
input its data not just as cool hypertext, but in a
machine-readable form, allowing programs to wander the
globe analyzing and surmising ... The
knowledge-engineering field has to learn how to be
global, and the Web has to learn knowledge engineering,
but in the end this might be a way in which again the
scientific field leads the world into something very
powerful, and a new paradigm shift. - 1995
~~~
Suppose ... all these minor problems
are cleared up, would we be seriously empowered as
[Vannevar] Bush would like us to be, as a whole?
Let's think about scaling problems. Let's think
of some large numbers. The number of Web documents. The
number of people in the world. The number of neurons in
the brian. We're thinking of lots of things all
connected together. Web objects, people and neurons all
have the ability to have random associations. The neurons
seem to work (on a good day) as a integrated team. The
people do in parts. The Web documents just sit there. But
pretty soon the Web documents will start getting up and
wandering around. So when Web objects become mobile, and
start wandering around and interacting with each other,
would you now put much money on them making sense as a
whole? - 1995
~~~
As we move into the world of mobile
code, of secure systems, of network payment, the new
principles are being, silently or not, laid down. These
principles will define the behavior of a new machine, a
new anthill, a new brain, which is the sum of ourselves
and our creations. Vannevar Bush's MEMEX was
described as a complex machine. We see it now as a cog in
a larger system. We feel fairly proud that we have built
MEMEX-like machines. But now we have links, do we know
what to do with them? When it comes to designing larger
machine, we are still banging the rocks together. But we
are at a time of great creativity, of great potential for
change for better or worse, and there is a feeling that
in fact we may be able to bring our collective teamwork
up to a level at which we can ensure our survival. -
1995
|
|
