I love french noses. Red hair. Round faces. Green and blue eyes. Smooth skin. Well-defined cheekbones. And so many other things. When we meet someone, especially of the opposite sex, we usually make a 'hot-or-not' judgment within milliseconds. I know I do. And it puzzles me. What is it about bone structure and flesh distribution that makes some people stand out from some others? Is this not some form of racism?
What I am talking about is beauty. But what does this word mean? It is certainly slightly different for each one of us, but some objective criteria persist, generally relevant to symmetry. Also different cultures consider beautiful what is thought to be healthy. We perceive beautiful people as being more likeable than less attractive people. If we accept that there is no fundamental correlation between external appearance and personality, what are we looking for in beauty? Why would we consider a person with asymmetric facial characteristics as having a worse personality than someone who has a perfectly balanced face? In fact, due to this beauty bias, the opposite could be argued. A person who is considered beautiful would be more prone to let us down since they are spoiled by the positive evaluations they receive by default. A person who has to work for the evaluation they receive would be more likely to value it. But we still persist in our bias towards beauty, in fact today's culture may place greater emphasis on it than the culture of generations before us.
If we see humans as evolved animals, there must have been some usefulness for the beauty factor. We know that malnourished organisms have less energy to expend on superficial concerns such as external appearance. They are too preoccupied with survival. Animals go through great trouble to advertise their energy surplus by developing aesthetically pleasing but otherwise useless features (think peacocks). Similarly, male birds develop elaborate singing techniques to make their call to the females. This energy surplus essentially signals a well fed animal, hence a good fit for the current environment, an animal that can provide both good genes to and be strong enough to protect its descendants. So beauty is a great evolutionary mechanism in areas where natural selection applies great pressure.
Out of this elaborate instinctual interplay, little is relevant in today's human society, at least in the developed world. We are not under pressure for survival, individually or as a species in general. I'd venture so far as to say that most every woman in today's developed world would be an absolute stunner in the eyes of a primitive human of 10,000 years ago. We just have a way more resources at or disposal, we have a much more varied and complete diet than the average human of ten millenia ago. But what about relative attractiveness? What does the difference in attractiveness between two females of the same culture tell us? Some things such as skin quality and height might be indicators of genes and upbringing. Other things, think nose shape or hair colour, may have nothing to do with fitness at all. In many cases, our obsession with beauty is nothing than an evolutionary heuristic, gone wild. if this is true, it harms us more than it helps us in choosing potential partners when personality factors may after so much more in building a healthy, sustainable relationship. I assume soft external factors such as 'style' may imply something about personality but that can only go so far.
I guess what I am trying to say is that I am disappointed at myself for not being able to see past beauty. And I've tried. I fail to be attracted to people who I personally don't consider externally pleasing although I am well aware how little this actually means. I wish I could choose potential partners filtering for other criteria than beauty since in pragmatic terms it limits my choice based on seemingly irrelevant factors. At the end of the day it decreases my possibility of finding the best available partner, since I am looking at more or less the same place that everyone else is looking and disregarding the same people that everyone else is disregarding. Maybe an amazing person that I would automatically classify as a friend for lack of attractiveness for example.
On the other hand there is something inside me that would like to believe that beauty has meaning, it just 'feels' right. But what is it? Is beauty a distraction for the beholder, an instinct gone bad, or something we should actively look for in our potential partners?
Sunday, 29 June 2008
Tuesday, 17 June 2008
Hypothesis #4, Monk Occam and White paper worldviews
This is a continuation from the previous post where I wrote about my 3 fundamental hypotheses. To summarize:
1. I can trust my senses and therefore my observations.
2. This is not a huge Truman show-style play by all of you.
3. Nature will keep responding as it has until now.
Thinking about these three, I realized there was a 4th one I was forgetting. which is:
4. The past is not a lie
What if all the world started 3 minutes ago? Imagine all memories, evidence, fossils etc were planted to create the illusion of a past. A variation of this is some times claimed by 'young earth creationists' to explain various proofs that is brought forward that the universe is several billion years old. They claim that all evidence was 'planted' by God. Is this falsifiable? Not really. But it wouldn't be nice of Him now, would it? So as with the other hypotheses, we assume #4 holds.
But why do we make such huge leaps and accept these hypotheses, you ask? For one thing, if they don't hold, the truth may be literally anything. We have no leg to stand on. But there is a simpler justification for all this, offered by a 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar called William of Ockham. Odd trivia, Ockham, the location, is apparently a 9 mile drive from where I currently live. Exciting! Back to the principle, to quote the wiki-gods:
"The principle is often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae ("law of parsimony" or "law of succinctness"): "entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem", roughly translated as "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity".
This is often paraphrased as "All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best." In other words, when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selecting the theory that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities. It is in this sense that Occam's razor is usually understood."
So we accept that these hypotheses hold, because it is the simplest explanation. Yes we could theorize that all this is a huge conspiracy by a mad elephant genius who has imprisoned all our minds in a virtual world. We could make any number of hypotheses that lead to the same observations we are making now. Yet we accept the simplest one, that is the principle we go by, and it seems to have worked out pretty well until now. Is it perfect? Of course not, but it's what we have. To paraphrase a greek saying, "It's the least obscene scenario".
So we covered #4 and Monk Occam. What about the white paper? A closely related set of thoughts I have had recently relates to a reccuring fear that I have. What if all civilization disappears in a mad max/lost kind of scenario? What if I no longer have access to computers and technology in general? In fact, what if all expertise is lost for some reason say, a mass amnesia disease. I postulate that the truth should be recoverable, given time. This means that I do not accept any kind of text that claims to be divine revelation of knowledge. If it cannot be independently recreated from white paper by an independent observer of reality that lives in an isolated environment, it is worth very little to me and I suspect it contravenes Occam's razor. It is not a simple theory if I am required to accept an entire book as being infallible without proof, no matter what that book is. That's why philosophies like Zen are attractive to me. They are recoverable and not bound to a specific text. One of their main messages is that you can see everything in anything. If you become expert enough in fishing for example, you can draw basic principles that can be applied in other areas. I guess that's why sayings and parables are so effective.
To summarize, I try to build my worldview based on the simplest explanation I can come up with, given my observations and having in mind that this should be re-creatable from the ground up if I was to open my eyes and find my self with no memory, in an unknown world. I think these thoughts conclude what I wrote in my previous blog post, although I am sure I will find more to write soon enough.
Until then, take care.
Alexandros
1. I can trust my senses and therefore my observations.
2. This is not a huge Truman show-style play by all of you.
3. Nature will keep responding as it has until now.
Thinking about these three, I realized there was a 4th one I was forgetting. which is:
4. The past is not a lie
What if all the world started 3 minutes ago? Imagine all memories, evidence, fossils etc were planted to create the illusion of a past. A variation of this is some times claimed by 'young earth creationists' to explain various proofs that is brought forward that the universe is several billion years old. They claim that all evidence was 'planted' by God. Is this falsifiable? Not really. But it wouldn't be nice of Him now, would it? So as with the other hypotheses, we assume #4 holds.
But why do we make such huge leaps and accept these hypotheses, you ask? For one thing, if they don't hold, the truth may be literally anything. We have no leg to stand on. But there is a simpler justification for all this, offered by a 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar called William of Ockham. Odd trivia, Ockham, the location, is apparently a 9 mile drive from where I currently live. Exciting! Back to the principle, to quote the wiki-gods:
"The principle is often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae ("law of parsimony" or "law of succinctness"): "entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem", roughly translated as "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity".
This is often paraphrased as "All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best." In other words, when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selecting the theory that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities. It is in this sense that Occam's razor is usually understood."
So we accept that these hypotheses hold, because it is the simplest explanation. Yes we could theorize that all this is a huge conspiracy by a mad elephant genius who has imprisoned all our minds in a virtual world. We could make any number of hypotheses that lead to the same observations we are making now. Yet we accept the simplest one, that is the principle we go by, and it seems to have worked out pretty well until now. Is it perfect? Of course not, but it's what we have. To paraphrase a greek saying, "It's the least obscene scenario".
So we covered #4 and Monk Occam. What about the white paper? A closely related set of thoughts I have had recently relates to a reccuring fear that I have. What if all civilization disappears in a mad max/lost kind of scenario? What if I no longer have access to computers and technology in general? In fact, what if all expertise is lost for some reason say, a mass amnesia disease. I postulate that the truth should be recoverable, given time. This means that I do not accept any kind of text that claims to be divine revelation of knowledge. If it cannot be independently recreated from white paper by an independent observer of reality that lives in an isolated environment, it is worth very little to me and I suspect it contravenes Occam's razor. It is not a simple theory if I am required to accept an entire book as being infallible without proof, no matter what that book is. That's why philosophies like Zen are attractive to me. They are recoverable and not bound to a specific text. One of their main messages is that you can see everything in anything. If you become expert enough in fishing for example, you can draw basic principles that can be applied in other areas. I guess that's why sayings and parables are so effective.
To summarize, I try to build my worldview based on the simplest explanation I can come up with, given my observations and having in mind that this should be re-creatable from the ground up if I was to open my eyes and find my self with no memory, in an unknown world. I think these thoughts conclude what I wrote in my previous blog post, although I am sure I will find more to write soon enough.
Until then, take care.
Alexandros
Sunday, 8 June 2008
My Fundamental Hypotheses
One of my recently acquired interests is Epistemology. Don't give me that blank look, it's a perfectly legitimate topic for someone my age to be interested in. Or not.Ok , fine, it's not. So what is it you ask? Well, the philosophy of knowledge/science of course. In other words, it's an attempt to answer the question: "How do we know that we know what we know?"Ok , fine, blank look again. Let me put it in context. I claim to seek the truth. I have made this my personal goal in life, a priority over many other goals. Cheesy I know, what can I do. If I am going to go down this path seriously, at some point I have to define what I mean by truth. The scientific method is nice and dandy, but apparently it is not enough to define truth. Epistemology has much more food for thought to give us. So, after a bit of reading and a lot of absurd thinking, I present to you the three hypotheses that I have realized the foundation of my world is built upon. If they are false, I'm in deep trouble. I call them hypotheses because I cannot prove them to be true. In fact, I don't think anyone can. yet.
1. You all are real and fundamentally similar to me.
Here's a thought: What if you all don't exist? What if everything around me is an illusion, projected by some unknown entity? What If I am the only real mind around? Or even if you do all exist, how do I know this is not some huge Truman-Show style conspiracy? How do I know you are not all paid actors? Well, I don't. And I have no Idea how I could prove it, so I just accept it. If anyone of you has a clue please fill me in. But should I trust you? Hmm...
2. We are not all being collectively deceived by our senses about the nature of reality.
Ok, so you do exist and experience things more or less like I do. What tells me that we are not all being played for fools? You know, Matrix-style stuff, but without the feeling that 'something is wrong'. Everything feels fine, we're just trapped in a virtual reality. Or maybe we're an idea in someones head, or a simulation in someones computer. Mind you, I am referring to fundamental facts like laws of physics. When we get to more complicated stuff, like social phenomena, agreement is much more difficult to come to. But we all agree on a few things as being objective and these are the things I am referring to. So, do we know if it's all just a big lie by some big guy? Sorry, no. So let's just accept that it's not, shall we?
3. The laws of nature will keep on behaving tomorrow like they did yesterday
Aka. the problem of induction. So we have established this moment. You are here, I am here and here is real. more or less. But will reality behave the same way tomorrow? Let's take gravity for example. If I drop something in a vacuum, it will fall towards the center of the earth at a fixed acceleration, depending on my location. If I stay at the same location and try the same thing tomorrow , it will fall with the exact same acceleration again. Will it? Well, it has until now. For as long as we've been measuring the laws of nature they have been behaving consistently. Our observations have been identical and repeatable. There has never been a credible observation of something falling towards the moon (when dropped close to the surface of the earth) for example. But what does that tell us? For all we know, the laws of nature may be set in such a way that tomorrow they start behaving differently. All we have are our observations until this moment. For all our models, theories, theorems and laws, we cannot claim to know what will happen the next second. Our physics is only as good as the observations that validate it. As long as the observations are stable, we're safe. So I happily assume that stuff around us will keep behaving more or less the same way. What else can I do after all?
Now I can imagine lots of people wondering why on earth I would make dark and hopeless thoughts like these. Well it's simple. For one, because I can. It's fun to challenge everything! Ok , so you don't agree. What's more, they help me bring my mind back to zero knowledge. I'm not the only one that makes these hypotheses, we all do. It's just that I'm making them explicit. (Of course I'm not trying to say I am the only one who does. Much smarter people have thought of this stuff before.) By doing this I get a true perspective of how little I really-really know. An ancient Greek guy once said "I know one thing, that I know nothing". It's something like that. Makes you be much more cool-headed in your assertions.
Finally, it is a huge motivator in learning more about what is going on within these hypotheses. Assuming they are true, there is a heck of a lot we can learn within them. And maybe, just maybe somewhere within this body of knowledge are the keys we need to unlock these hypotheses themselves. Makes you wonder why on earth we do anything other than frantically trying to figure out whatever we can about the world around us. My favourite off-the-wall-crazy idea is that we are left here with clues as to what is really going on, but we have to find and read the clues before the time runs out. I cannot prove it is true. I don't even believe it's true. But I know it could be. Can you prove it couldn't be?
So this is my first foray into the crazy but fun world of Epistemology. Based on these simple hypotheses, I think I can safely start building my world up. I am not yet taking a specific school as being correct but I have ruled a few out based on these hypotheses. Solipsism is out and truth relativism (i hope this is the correct use of the term) is out as well. Just because if they are true, there's not much meaning in actually doing anything other than the pursuit of pleasure. Other than that, just these hypotheses. If they are true, all is good. If they are not, let's try not to think about it.
Confusedly yours,
Alexandros
1. You all are real and fundamentally similar to me.
Here's a thought: What if you all don't exist? What if everything around me is an illusion, projected by some unknown entity? What If I am the only real mind around? Or even if you do all exist, how do I know this is not some huge Truman-Show style conspiracy? How do I know you are not all paid actors? Well, I don't. And I have no Idea how I could prove it, so I just accept it. If anyone of you has a clue please fill me in. But should I trust you? Hmm...
2. We are not all being collectively deceived by our senses about the nature of reality.
Ok, so you do exist and experience things more or less like I do. What tells me that we are not all being played for fools? You know, Matrix-style stuff, but without the feeling that 'something is wrong'. Everything feels fine, we're just trapped in a virtual reality. Or maybe we're an idea in someones head, or a simulation in someones computer. Mind you, I am referring to fundamental facts like laws of physics. When we get to more complicated stuff, like social phenomena, agreement is much more difficult to come to. But we all agree on a few things as being objective and these are the things I am referring to. So, do we know if it's all just a big lie by some big guy? Sorry, no. So let's just accept that it's not, shall we?
3. The laws of nature will keep on behaving tomorrow like they did yesterday
Aka. the problem of induction. So we have established this moment. You are here, I am here and here is real. more or less. But will reality behave the same way tomorrow? Let's take gravity for example. If I drop something in a vacuum, it will fall towards the center of the earth at a fixed acceleration, depending on my location. If I stay at the same location and try the same thing tomorrow , it will fall with the exact same acceleration again. Will it? Well, it has until now. For as long as we've been measuring the laws of nature they have been behaving consistently. Our observations have been identical and repeatable. There has never been a credible observation of something falling towards the moon (when dropped close to the surface of the earth) for example. But what does that tell us? For all we know, the laws of nature may be set in such a way that tomorrow they start behaving differently. All we have are our observations until this moment. For all our models, theories, theorems and laws, we cannot claim to know what will happen the next second. Our physics is only as good as the observations that validate it. As long as the observations are stable, we're safe. So I happily assume that stuff around us will keep behaving more or less the same way. What else can I do after all?
Now I can imagine lots of people wondering why on earth I would make dark and hopeless thoughts like these. Well it's simple. For one, because I can. It's fun to challenge everything! Ok , so you don't agree. What's more, they help me bring my mind back to zero knowledge. I'm not the only one that makes these hypotheses, we all do. It's just that I'm making them explicit. (Of course I'm not trying to say I am the only one who does. Much smarter people have thought of this stuff before.) By doing this I get a true perspective of how little I really-really know. An ancient Greek guy once said "I know one thing, that I know nothing". It's something like that. Makes you be much more cool-headed in your assertions.
Finally, it is a huge motivator in learning more about what is going on within these hypotheses. Assuming they are true, there is a heck of a lot we can learn within them. And maybe, just maybe somewhere within this body of knowledge are the keys we need to unlock these hypotheses themselves. Makes you wonder why on earth we do anything other than frantically trying to figure out whatever we can about the world around us. My favourite off-the-wall-crazy idea is that we are left here with clues as to what is really going on, but we have to find and read the clues before the time runs out. I cannot prove it is true. I don't even believe it's true. But I know it could be. Can you prove it couldn't be?
So this is my first foray into the crazy but fun world of Epistemology. Based on these simple hypotheses, I think I can safely start building my world up. I am not yet taking a specific school as being correct but I have ruled a few out based on these hypotheses. Solipsism is out and truth relativism (i hope this is the correct use of the term) is out as well. Just because if they are true, there's not much meaning in actually doing anything other than the pursuit of pleasure. Other than that, just these hypotheses. If they are true, all is good. If they are not, let's try not to think about it.
Confusedly yours,
Alexandros
Tuesday, 3 June 2008
The Advertising Immunity is upon us
So the BBC ran an article recently claiming that web surfers are getting more 'selfish and ruthless'. In disbelief, I read the article in search of the proof of our increased/increasing selfishness. Apparently we click on less ads. And we do what we want faster. I kid you not. Being efficient, immune to distractions (such as ads) as well as being more aware of how the web works and hence wasting less time is proof of our selfishness. Next thing you know, we will be clicking on the bloody banners as an act of charity to prove our selfless nature. Now, I wanted to write this article for a while, but then I saw this post in a blog somewhere which put things into perspective. Aside from the silly title of the BBC article, it seems to be pointing to a reality. Advertising is based on the assumption that we cannot control our focus, that if you put something in front of us users/viewers/passers-by, we will pay attention to it, even if it is not what we were looking for initially. However besides the tools that we can use to block advertising on the web, it seems that ads on social networks are not having much success selling ads either.
So what happens when in this arms race, the human brain responds with improved focus? It seems that whenever a flaw in the mind is found and exploited to death, the next generation grows up with a predisposition to avoid this pitfall. There will always be a vulnerable minority, but the mainstream masses seem to handle themselves against narcotics, gambling and other shortfalls in human perception, if not by pure genetic ability, then by learned cultural means.
So, will the advertisers simply increase their dosage on more potent ingredients such as, say, sex? Oh I wish they do.
...
No, no, you misunderstand me. I mean, I wish they do so we can finally develop an immunity to sex advertising as well. Given a few years of course. Objectification of women and men as a means of increasing sales is simply classless. But if it can be done, someone will do it. It is the way of the market, and the way it should be. The good thing is that our brains and culture will also similarly evolve to distinguish commercial sexuality from the real thing and dismiss the former as mere noise, which it is. In a way, for some people, it already has. I am hoping in more of that for more of us.
What about personalization? That's the next big thing, right? The premise is simple: If they sell us ads that we _want_ to see, we will _want_ to see them. The catch is that in order to judge what we want to see, they have to learn quite a bit about each one of us individually. And that reveals the ugly twin of personalization, which is surveillance. And these twins are joined at the hip. In order to personalize, they have to know who we are and to know that, they have to keep an eye on us. Now, assuming people may not mind some surveillance by a commercial entity, even disregarding that too personal can become creepy, there is another problem with the core argument for personalized advertising. When the advertisers say "Advertisements you want to see are almost like actual content", they are missing the part where someone has paid to have their advertisement displayed. If that was the best thing for me to see, I would have found it myself. I would have paid to have it found for me even. The fact that someone is making an expenditure means that there is some distortion happening. And this distortion will be corrected itself by the same mechanisms that have dealt with the other distortions mentioned previously. If these hypotheses hold, then the advertising game is a dead end.
What next you ask? Well, it just so happens that advertising is the engine of the professional web. Most professional websites are competing for what they call 'eyeballs' which is what they sell to advertisees. Even subscription based publications are abandoning that model and turning to ads. But it is not just content that depends on advertising. Google itself is a company that is built on advertising, which brings in 99% of their revenue. Take the advertising away and the world is back to a very primitive web, one that either has no professional input, or one that depends on subscriptions, or micropayments. Surprisingly, Google seems to be aware. Of course it should be noted that it is not the only option. Organizations such as Wikimedia (parent of Wikipedia and other wonderful ventures) are surviving just fine without advertising so that should be a very viable model as well. For the ones that are not charitable foundations though, there is one very good avenue to replacing them: decentralization.
Here is where I of course offer the usual disclaimer: Take my words with a grain of salt. This is what I want to see, so calling me biased is an understatement. Take my words only as seriously as my arguments permit you to. I welcome you to challenge me in the comments. If you have an element of knowledge that I do not, if you have noticed a flaw in the arguments or if you have attained an insight that eludes me, do not leave me in darkness, I beg of you.
So what happens when in this arms race, the human brain responds with improved focus? It seems that whenever a flaw in the mind is found and exploited to death, the next generation grows up with a predisposition to avoid this pitfall. There will always be a vulnerable minority, but the mainstream masses seem to handle themselves against narcotics, gambling and other shortfalls in human perception, if not by pure genetic ability, then by learned cultural means.
So, will the advertisers simply increase their dosage on more potent ingredients such as, say, sex? Oh I wish they do.
...
No, no, you misunderstand me. I mean, I wish they do so we can finally develop an immunity to sex advertising as well. Given a few years of course. Objectification of women and men as a means of increasing sales is simply classless. But if it can be done, someone will do it. It is the way of the market, and the way it should be. The good thing is that our brains and culture will also similarly evolve to distinguish commercial sexuality from the real thing and dismiss the former as mere noise, which it is. In a way, for some people, it already has. I am hoping in more of that for more of us.
What about personalization? That's the next big thing, right? The premise is simple: If they sell us ads that we _want_ to see, we will _want_ to see them. The catch is that in order to judge what we want to see, they have to learn quite a bit about each one of us individually. And that reveals the ugly twin of personalization, which is surveillance. And these twins are joined at the hip. In order to personalize, they have to know who we are and to know that, they have to keep an eye on us. Now, assuming people may not mind some surveillance by a commercial entity, even disregarding that too personal can become creepy, there is another problem with the core argument for personalized advertising. When the advertisers say "Advertisements you want to see are almost like actual content", they are missing the part where someone has paid to have their advertisement displayed. If that was the best thing for me to see, I would have found it myself. I would have paid to have it found for me even. The fact that someone is making an expenditure means that there is some distortion happening. And this distortion will be corrected itself by the same mechanisms that have dealt with the other distortions mentioned previously. If these hypotheses hold, then the advertising game is a dead end.
What next you ask? Well, it just so happens that advertising is the engine of the professional web. Most professional websites are competing for what they call 'eyeballs' which is what they sell to advertisees. Even subscription based publications are abandoning that model and turning to ads. But it is not just content that depends on advertising. Google itself is a company that is built on advertising, which brings in 99% of their revenue. Take the advertising away and the world is back to a very primitive web, one that either has no professional input, or one that depends on subscriptions, or micropayments. Surprisingly, Google seems to be aware. Of course it should be noted that it is not the only option. Organizations such as Wikimedia (parent of Wikipedia and other wonderful ventures) are surviving just fine without advertising so that should be a very viable model as well. For the ones that are not charitable foundations though, there is one very good avenue to replacing them: decentralization.
Here is where I of course offer the usual disclaimer: Take my words with a grain of salt. This is what I want to see, so calling me biased is an understatement. Take my words only as seriously as my arguments permit you to. I welcome you to challenge me in the comments. If you have an element of knowledge that I do not, if you have noticed a flaw in the arguments or if you have attained an insight that eludes me, do not leave me in darkness, I beg of you.
Sunday, 1 June 2008
My Social Web 3.0
Oh so many people have tried to define web 3.0, essentially connecting the dots from web 1.0 and the 'current' era of web 2.0. So I thought I'd toss my two cents in the wishing well. The way you define web 3.0 has to do with the way you define the previous webs. The web 1.0 is fairly uncontroversial, if only because it was what we had in the beginning. There are many ways to describe it, but we all know what we had more or less. We were surfers surfing web pages. From one page to the next, hyperlink to hyperlink.
Web 2.0 is essentially what happened after the dot com bust at the turn of the Millennium. Some call it the era of interactive websites etc. I side with the people who call it the era of communities. The notion of community became prevalent. Everybody wants to build a community, from open source projects to multinationals, everybody is trying to connect with the users and crowd source whatever they can. User generated content, viral advertising, reputation systems, cloud computing are all children of web 2.0.
So for me, web 3.0 is the era when communities will claim independence and take over the web. In web 1.0 we all came for the hubs. The web pages , the articles, the directories. In web 2.0 we connected to each other through these hubs. Web 3.0 is when we ditch the intermediaries and connect to one another without the need for assistance. While they are building their data centers in the clouds, we can bypass them and talk to each other. Web 3.0 is when we build our decentralised, true web.
Just to add a bit of a disclaimer, my definition is not what I believe will happen, it is not a prophecy. It is a dream and a wish. I do believe we will reach it at some point, but cannot claim I know this will happen any time soon.
Web 2.0 is essentially what happened after the dot com bust at the turn of the Millennium. Some call it the era of interactive websites etc. I side with the people who call it the era of communities. The notion of community became prevalent. Everybody wants to build a community, from open source projects to multinationals, everybody is trying to connect with the users and crowd source whatever they can. User generated content, viral advertising, reputation systems, cloud computing are all children of web 2.0.
So for me, web 3.0 is the era when communities will claim independence and take over the web. In web 1.0 we all came for the hubs. The web pages , the articles, the directories. In web 2.0 we connected to each other through these hubs. Web 3.0 is when we ditch the intermediaries and connect to one another without the need for assistance. While they are building their data centers in the clouds, we can bypass them and talk to each other. Web 3.0 is when we build our decentralised, true web.
Just to add a bit of a disclaimer, my definition is not what I believe will happen, it is not a prophecy. It is a dream and a wish. I do believe we will reach it at some point, but cannot claim I know this will happen any time soon.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
