BuzzMachine

The stream does not replace the page, it complements the page. There will be no “post-page … world”, what there will be is more like the “Great Mandala.” The page and the stream complementing each other.

There are a number of dichotomies that one must understand in order to grok the changes to media technology that we’re observing…

Retrospective vs. Prospective: There are two major “modes” to information retrieval and discovery. The first, and most common, is retrospective search (implemented by “search engines”, etc.). The questions answered are those of the form “What was written in the past on this subject?” The second mode is prospective. The questions asked are of the form: “Tell me whenever there is something of interest on this subject.”
The page is the subject of retrospective search, the stream is the product of prospective search. The two modes compliment each other. When you hear of a new concept or event, you will often do a retrospective search to discover what has been written about it in the past. Once you come up to speed on the past, if you maintain an interest, you will wish to see new content as it is generated. As you say, it is like a Mandala — the two modes feed and compliment each other. Both are necessary. Neither is sufficient.

Follow vs. Track: In selecting the news you read, you can choose to “follow” the content produced by particular writers or curated by particular editors, etc. Or, you can choose to “track” media that discusses particular concepts based on the content rather than who wrote it or where it was published. Twitter, microblogging systems, and most blog aggregators implement streams whose content is selected based on the the “follow” model (i.e. follow stephenfry). However, in the future, we’ll see more and more streams created as a result of content-based tracking.

Retrieval vs. Scoring: The original search engines were primarily “retrieval” engines. Given a set of keywords or boolean expressions, they did retrospective search that retrieved all previously indexed items that satisfied the given search query. Google became the market leader by perfecting a method of “scoring” and ranking results. You can still get “everything” that matched your query, but the top results will be those considered most important for you to consider. Today, most “stream” and prospective search systems are still at the “pre-Google” level of technology. Automated stream-based scoring methods are still primitive and little deployed. (But, this will change soon…) A tremendous market opportunity exists for those who can produce prospective, tracking systems that incorporate effective scoring. Such systems will be required in order to implement automatically generated “hyperpersonal streams.”

Request/Response vs. Publish/Subscribe: Traditional systems (including those based on HTTP) rely on active consumers and “passive” content providers. For anyone to receive information, they first needed to “request” that information (i.e. by issuing a search or by “going” to a web page.) The content source was unable to provide value unless the consumer polled it asking for content. One of the big changes that comes with “streams” is that we’re moving to a publish/subscribe model which incorporates “prospective search” into an asynchronous delivery model. The result is a system in which information flows to the user when it becomes available — not simply when the user requests it.

Sender-controlled-routing vs. Recipient-controlled-routing: Email is a classic example of “sender controlled routing.” In an email system, those who receive messages is determined by the sender of the message. However, we’re now moving towards an environment in which “recipient-controlled-routing” is becoming more common. (If you’re thinking about Twitter, consider that “direct messages” are sender-controlled while “follow” implements “recipient-controlled-routing.”

Note that in no case is one side of the dichotomy going to completely replace the other side. In all the cases above, the two sides compliment each other. The page will not be replaced by the stream, it will be complimented by it…

bob wyman

bob wyman

The article says “repository” and I say NEW MEDIA! I’m a graphic designer. It might not seem really obvious yet, in 2009, but with all of some forms of data in an available holographic format, a screen that projects from the floor, and then assimilates data from a slightly artificially intelligent robot keeper is probably Next Gen (7, 8, 9 or something like that), from a tech viewpoint. Websites won’t die, as a screen mounted “touch-based” and keyboard-based and microphone with hard disk communications technology, but representations of information, put into a holographic projector and voice activated can be used and implemented to enhance up any process server, in order to get to another plateau within the information “event horizon”.

After that, it is more likely that a really well-designed and affordable human-like synthetic type of robot or a small easy to transport device (self-propelled) with large information capacity and storage (and non-lethal) and advanced communication abilities will be developed as a sort of human assistant. (like today’s cell phones and laptops). But I have a fear that a temporarily “disabled” human population, resulting from uncontrolled and badly legislated robot tech, compared to previously existing “normal” human strengths and weaknesses of 100 years past (from the early 21st century) will be a large factor for medical practitioners in the resulting tech revolution of the 22nd century.

And, in the 22nd century, more programmable and safe and reliable forms of transportation will enable users to enjoy life and travel more, but probably will limit itself to safe “civilized” nations such as those that now operate diplomatically (West and some Asian) with regard to what is affordable and sells in terms of a tech advanced society. What can be found, as one extrapolates (time travel) involving this level of future thought are new biomass fuels and even safe nuke energy formats that are small enough to be considered “safe” with fail-safe features.

Our human adventures and exploits in the later years of the 21st century as oil runs out will be to somehow include guaranteed health protections and certain, lethal disease eradications and medical advances. Also, many well-educated people could contribute to the education of the next and former generations of humans, animals, whatever. Honest and forthright concerns for our elderly people, and elderly benefits and life-prolonging and enhancing tech can be realizd in this century.

Concerns about the creation of jobs for (and maintenance of jobs for) everyone who asks for one, job and career advancement, and certain sorts of research, development and “management of” the facts surrounding the truths about large, numerous, longer life, human populations, changing demographics and geographical life-choices, global human tech-inspired forms of depression and “meaning of life” problems, religion and tolerance of differences, large output energy creation and storage for use, highly developed defense weapons and accelerated Earth weather damage caused by global warming and abrupt climate change will also become tangible and quite real, in this century. We as Earth people have to deal with all of that and more, throughout today and on into the future.

The human colonizations of orbital space, including Earth, and the Moon and Mars habitation experiments starting in 2072 will take decades to produce any sort of space-based self-sufficiency and safety, but tech-wise, advanced space travel, food storage and recycling, water accumulation and gathering technologies, communications, using lasers and satellites and differing forms of screen and radio and beam communications and new space engine formats and flight tech will probably become the “norm” in the next century.