Dream For Web 3.0 and Beyond
If greatest impact and adoption are used to define the big picture at each edition level, then what I see as the basis of 2.0 development are blogging and rss. Neither one by itself was 2.0. Even before the emergence and growth of large blogging platforms there were personal weblogs and anyone motivated to could afford to find a friend of a friend to help them set up their own site, although most who did quickly discovered that the complexities of seo and other ways of connecting were beyond them.
Blogging platforms, especially the ground breaking MySpace (on the heels of Friendster), have become the basis of all the current social networks and communities. Rss is basically the automation and customization of mailing lists, brilliant in itself, but not complex in terms of behavioral change. In fact, every successful component of 2.0 so far is simply enhanced enabling of what people have always done and wanted to do before most of them knew computers existed: talk about themselves and/or their ideas, converse, choose topics and conversational partners, show off, sell stuff, work with others, etc.
Some additional enabling using 2.0 tools and ideas can be and is realized by individuals, small businesses, and sole proprietors, as well as enterprise users, but in many cases the growth of change is slowing as it hits barriers beyond which it cannot yet travel. I don’t believe those barriers are technological, though, but rather a product of our conception or lack thereof. The rather foggy collective idea of where we are and what to do next, it seems to me, is often floundering. The best analogy I can come up with for what I’m seeing is a mass of bumper cars, of many sizes in terms of capacity, constantly impacting against the inherent barriers of their separate structures. Frequent users occupy space in multiple cars and get increasingly frustrated with having to jump back and forth.
Some of the old definitions of 2.0 included building common passageways and links between many or even all of these bumper cars. I’ve seen the path to this building proposition expressed from a variety of perspectives, including compatibility between systems, languages, and/or architectures, common programming and coding standards, and user profile integration through a variety of methods such as open Id and customized search. I believe that some combination of all these perspectives, however limited, is one of the reasons Google is in the position of prominence that it is.
An emerging common access and connectivity solution idea is referred to as the cloud, where by having data and systems residing in a commonly accessible domain we will somehow dissolve those bumper cars altogether. In some ways, the cloud concept does make sense. It could be a bit like creating a giant virtual bumper car emporium where the properties of all the cars are broken down into a huge a la carte buffet. (yes, I’m forever mixing metaphors …treat them as little bridges, please)
I’ve now progressed to where most people pondering web 3.0 are, and am moving into the direction of my own dream or wish list. Remember what I said about Google? That I believe the key to their success is in combining perspectives? On that basis, I could name my vision of what the future could be ‘Beyond Google’.
The next paragraph is for those who subscribe to the notion that anything worth saying or doing can be expressed in one or two sentences, which is sort of true, except that most people don’t have a clue what those sentences mean until they’ve seen the elephant from the other side of time. Simple tools that we take for granted, such as a telephone, would not exist if one or more breakthrough theories had not been developed and proven scientifically, but no one actually pictured things such as telephones at the time that the theories were first proposed.
Beyond Google is the convergence of different viewpoints. Convergence is achieved through collaboration. Successful collaboration combines multiple viewpoints of multiple parties.
In January, before my extended absence, I wrote a post titled There Are 3 Sides To Every Relationship. It was based on an extremely simplistic description of the multi-faceted and multi-dimensional way that I see things. The over simplification still makes me wince at its clumsiness, but the surprise was that quite a number of people personally responded to me, mostly in understanding. Essentially, what I was saying is that in every interaction there is your side and my side, and then there is the whole picture, and that this view of all dimensions and perspectives at once is also the best tool for conflict resolution. The same view can be applied to the requirements of successful collaboration as I see them.
Both on a personal and societal level, we naturally classify ourselves and each other constantly. She’s a loner; he’s a party animal. They are a mom and pop business; we are a large corporate entity. We further constantly observe properties and assign values to them. This guy’s cool; that guy’s lame. These people are knowledgeable; those are ignorant. This gal’s nurturing; that one’s selfish. This is how we function, and no amount of political correctness or sensitivity is going to change this basic functionality. It is how we learn, through identification, observation, evaluation, judgment. On the level in which we need to share this world and co-exist in peace, only mutual respect and civility are required. On the level where we can collaborate, and thereby progress and evolve, the entirety of our views and motivations must be apprehended and integrated.
This applies as naturally to a small isolated group or community, to personal relationships or regular business engagement, as it does to large societies, and to all of humanity. There will always be conflicts, just as there will always be natural laws that apply to them, whether we’ve discovered and understood those laws yet or not.
Over the past 25 years, I have many times been asked for my opinion on their projects by entrepreneurs, which I am happy to offer. Certainly there are some who are essentially seeking only validation of their own ideas. Nevertheless, I’m usually game to offer a simplistic overview analysis, together with a few pointed questions, partly because entrepreneurial energy, ideas, and problem-solving are my personal fuel. The responses I am most used to getting are “I never thought of that” and “I’d have never looked at it that way”. This is not to say that my way of looking at things is superior to anyone else’s. My point is that very few of us look at any situation from more than a narrow sampling of perspectives.
So my dream, or wish, and my focus of energies as well, is toward greater and even full integration of perspectives in all we do. If, indeed, we can manage to understand natural laws and principles from an integration of perspectives viewpoint, perhaps the very idea of bumper cars will come to seem downright primitive instead of just a bit silly. 
August 9th, 2007 at 10:53 pm
Vera, this is soooo insightful.
“..in every interaction there is your side and my side, and then there is the whole picture, and that this view of all dimensions and perspectives at once is also the best tool for conflict resolution”
Absolutely. Our mental frames are the way in which we perceived or understood information. It’s how the human mind relates to and understand reality. But it is not reality itself - just an limited abstraction filtered through our biases and beliefs. We see what we see and that is the only world we really know. As far as we are concerned, that frame is reality. We have absolutely no reason to suspect that it might be our own projection.
Perhaps that’s why the world seems better when we are happy, and worse when we are sad. And the reason that people on “the other side” of an issue can seem so stupid and misinformed. We tend to avoid listening to people who have a perspective too far away from our own, and we defend against criticism rather than take it on board.
This seems especially true of entrepreneurs. Self confidence is a double edged sword because when we are certain there seems to be little value in outside guidance. Like a blinkered racehorse we have the focus and determination to go for our goals but lose our peripheral vision of the world around us… of reality.
And so it’s as well to remind ourselves from time to time that it’s what we don’t know we don’t know, that is most valuable to us.
Thank you for proving this point so vividly in practice with us Vera.
August 10th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
Thank you, Nick, and it’s my pleasure.
On the topic of entrepreneurial confidence as related to really listening, my experience is quite different.
I was very fortunate to get to meet and work with very successful entrepreneurs and business people when I was pretty young. The one thing I’d say that they all had in common, was that they listened a lot more and a lot harder than the average person.
It awed me then, when I was 20 years old …the idea that people 2 or even 3 times my age who had achieved the stature that comes with major success would actually listen to me more intently than I’d ever encountered before. If I’d closed my eyes, I’m sure I could have heard the motors revving and smelt the rubber burning. Before that, my own intensity and speed demon tendencies had mostly been seriously oddball things to me and the people around me. After a while, it just became who I am. It isn’t the same as being an adrenaline junkie (although I tend to that also). Some serious thinkers and listeners are relatively slow and deliberate, insisting on digesting everything over time.
In a way, I think of real confidence as having nothing to prove on any emotional level. When we meet or deal with new people, there’s always an observation or ‘gradual proving’ process, but that, imo, is about familiarity and trust.
Vera