Thinking Beyond Web 2.0 and How Social Networking Will Create the Future of the Web

Web 2.0 and social software in general, a topic that is being referring to as Social Computing.
If we dare to look beyond this type of computing, as extensions of Web 2.0 and Social Computing, we have the integration of all of our software and IT systems. Microsoft's Dr. Gary Flake refer said during the launch of Live Labs as the Internet Singularity. Dr. Gary Flake says; "The idea that a deeper and tighter coupling between the online and offline worlds will accelerate science, business, society, and self-actualization."
Social web sites such as YouTube , Facebook, Flickr and MySpace are examples of the paradigm change that happen suddenly as these new arenas are available to the users of the internet.

Technological Singularity
Dion Hinchcliffe has some interesting ideas around the new era of the internet and how it will evolve. Especially what is interesting is his mentioning of the The Social Graph: Issues and the strategies they propose for 2008. He says in his blog the following; “One of the hottest topics in the online world in the last couple of years has been the growth of social networking services such as Facebook and MySpace, as well as the addition of a social element to existing user experiences. Despite riding several waves of hype, it's now clear that the social networking space will only get hotter in 2008 according to most watchers. Social software has come fully into its own as of 2008 -- for all appearances permanently -- and understanding the reasons for this rapid rise as well as figuring out how to leverage it best is the job of everyone who wants to make the most of the Web 2.0 era.
Gaining a deeper insight to the social networking phenomenon, now exhibited by the tens of millions of users employing them globally on a daily basis for both personal and businesses uses, currently means understanding the fundamental unit of the social network, also one of the biggest new buzz phrases of the year: the social graph. Fortunately, that's simple enough despite the term's oblique reference to graph theory, which it is heavily based upon.”

Maturity of users on the internet play an important role in development

I agree with Dion in the majority of his standings, as the web is still in the young years for the mass users. The mass users needs changes as the maturity amongst the users develops. Its just like watching a baby begin to explore its environment during the first years of its life. From the baby lying there and only concentrate on its basic needs to become more interested in its surrounding through its crawling on the floor to the stage of walking for itself. The rest of its life it will learn how to communicate and be accepted in the social network of its culture and its sub-cultures. Internet I would say we are at the walking stage, however we are learning how to communicate with each others, which is part of the young humans life, however we need to be sophisticated and understand so many various cultures and their sub-cultures on the internet, which is part of the human teens and rest of life.

Social network analysis (SNA)

The popular business social networking service LinkedIn, uses a social graph model that sorts a member's social graph into different degrees of separation.

Through the social analytics, such as the Socalistics application in Facebook and the Interactive Friends Graph, though there are also commercial standalone products here for the enterprise and open Web spaces from companies like KnowNow and Bravadosoft. The Interactive Friends Graph is a nice, simple example anyone can try on their own.

Dion uses a basic approximation of the linear usage trends of Service-Oriented Architecture, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, and other organizing principles in software. These various types of software or architectures will maybe merge . But they also reflect that they are aspects of the same conceptual thing. This "same conceptual thing" , something called the Timeless Way of Building Software, can look completely different depending on their focus. Despite they have the same essential, constituent parts. In this future merged software world, people and the relationships between them together with the flow of control will change towards a more democratic model.

Technology and Intelligence

Philip Dorrell wrote in 2006 this; “The concept of the Technological Singularity is that technology is used to create new and more powerful technologies, and this creates a positive feedback cycle. The rate of development constantly accelerates, until, at some point in the future, there is an "explosion", where all possible new technologies are developed in a fraction of a second by a super-intelligent entity, whose super-intelligence is itself a result of the accelerated development of technology.
Intelligence plays a critical role in this scenario, since human intelligence is one of the main drivers of technological development, and "intelligence technologies" can be expected to play a more significant role in the feedback cycle as time progresses.”

In the same breath of this Phillip Dorell brings in some interesting aspects which is in my area of interest, namely the concept of what intelligence and the meaning behind this. Since intelligence is going to be a main differentiator of applications in the future, we need to understand the meaning of intelligence first of all. Intelligence is purposeful information processing to achieve knowledge of the subject of interest..

So that means the future applications will not only be to create intelligent machines, but to make humans more intelligent, and therefore act as intelligence amplifiers.

Data mining versus today’s data search

Information to knowledge is the key sentence for the future web applications in the next generation internet. Based on the fact that more and more data is available to us, in more and more complex forms, tells us that we need stronger internet infra structure and protocols to deliver the information. Transferring the information into knowledge creates the need for more intelligent applications beyond the web 2.0 arena. Searching and finding information in the google manner is no longer going to be enough for the users. They will need a more sophisticated tool set to empower their intelligence and feel the interaction between internet and other users. There are several tools enabling users to search and create knowledge of the searches already. Especially within pharmacy research and company like Array Biopharma’s use of SciTegic technology which facilitates fielding data mining models with the use of web as SOAP services. In addition software such as Clear Forest trying to make text driven business intelligence a step further by mining unstructured text plus enterprise data to create a competitive advantage.

Internet Protocol Development

The important step will be to build and Secure the Next-Generation IPv6-enabled Internet. Making the new protocols for transfer and communications is a major topic and will need to be addressed in order to enable transfer of larger and more complex data streams of the future.

Summary

So as a conclusion in this short article I would say there are several important quantum leaps that will happen in the next decade or even faster than that.

1. Evolution of a technological singularity of use in application development
2. Data mining versus data search will become central to amplify the human intelligence.
3. Social aspect and applications ability to envision and describe the social dependencies will become more and more important.
4. The internet communication protocols will enable use of more traffic as well as increased complexity of data
5. The users and their need to become more intelligent will be the main driver in the future development beyond web 2.0.

The technological singularity combined with intelligent data mining will create the new era of social networks that will need a more robust and refined way of transferring data across the internet platform. Social networks will enable single users as well as businesses to create analysis and enhance their intelligence about themselves but also about others or their competitors.