The Internet has accelerated connections to people and things faster than any other medium in history.
Beginning in 1956 with the Dartmouth Artificial Intelligence conference, technology has improved at an exponential rate. Marshall McLuhan made the idea of an interconnected global village part of our popular culture.
The protocols developed by Robert Kahn, Vinton Cerf, and others quickly became the most widely used network protocol in the world. From the early foundations of the Internet, when few outside of Universities or government facilities had much need to communicate digitally, people throughout the globe are able to reach others across the country, across the oceans, and across the globe.
The Turn of a New Era:
In a relatively short time, social mediums have created and continue to create significant momentum across all segments of the web. When we look at the traffic statistics of traditional web properties, we can see a huge shift in traffic to the social mediums.
Social networks for everything and anything are popping up faster than analysts can track. From pets' sites to finance sites, all topics, all geography, and most any industry, has or is launching a social network. Consumers are being overloaded with choices, different designs and interfaces, invitations and duplicative connections across multiple networks. In addition, consumers are overloaded with functions, features, and choices. The consumer is getting tired and looking for a "network" to rest on that satisfies most of their needs. However, the attraction to the medium of social networks remains strong across all ages, mediums, and devices. The attraction has only just begun.
The social web, as we know it today, is a mesh of platforms attempting to cater to numerous customer segments with different preferences and desires for privileges. Facebook's platform has enabled application developers to launch creative programs offered to 45 million people. The people consume that which appeals to them personally and professionally and the friend referral system spreads news of unique applications like California wildfires.
The meaning of all of these advances and those to come is a system that enhances and facilitates The Relationship Economy - an economy built around individuals and institutions that learn to use technology to enhance and enrich relationships for personal and professional gains. Technology is the enabling force; human nature is the driving force. Together they represent a profound intersection that will change the world as we know it today. This is just the beginning, and this chapter in history appears to have no end given the rate of technological advances and the thirst for the Human Network. Our world is changing rapidly and will continue to enable us to be connected to everything, everyone, and anywhere and at anytime.
What Will Your World Look Like? The simplistic graphic in this post provides a glimpse into the possibilities of a "free and open" internet soon to emerge on the landscape. This "picture" is only a sophomoric attempt to visualize what Your Place in the World will look like and what functionality you'll have.
Instead of jumping from one network to another we will be enabled to "create and facilitate" relationships, transactions and manage markets" from our own personal portal into the world. The interface for our portal will likely look a lot different than we are depicting but just let your imagination run a little and you should get the picture.
All our activity, relations and transaction will be facilitated through and within our own portal. We control access by topic, community and relations. We decide who and what transactions we will engage in and some of us will create brand new markets from our imaginations and experiences.
I'll have my place and you'll have yours. Together we'll decide how much of our individual places we want to share between individuals and/or entire communities. Our place will never leave us. Integrated into our mobile devices, our Cable TV, within our own suppliers and customers, our place will be where we manage our world seamlessly.
Too far fetched? Stay tuned and enter my place and share yours. Have a better idea for a design? Post it and share. What say you?