How Information Will Move

Pondering the most recent post by Tim Berners Lee has me thinking forward a little bit, philosophizing on technology and its role in sharing information with us. I’m thinking on how the cloud is the computer (Google, for instance, isn’t some server somewhere: it’s an addressable bunch of data and functions to perform on that data). I’m thinking about how devices pluck information from various clouds without us having to know much about them. And I’m thinking about how all these containers break down even further.
First, the Computing Platform
As time goes on, our hard drive isn’t our hard drive. We store our files in Flickr, on another storage device on the network, in bits and bobs everywhere. And that’s because it doesn’t matter. Provided we’re connected (and we are getting more and more connected every week), our technology just needs to remember where we put things. As such, our operating system doesn’t matter as much. It was built to control the resources we needed to do our jobs. When we don’t care which resources do the job, we shouldn’t care about the operating system.
When this becomes even more true is when pretty much every software application lives in the cloud and not on our local machine (or at least the most pertinent parts). When my iPod loads from wifi, and my flatscreen loads from wifi or WiMAX or EVDO (see how ubiquitous), then I don’t really care if there’s a start button or a Finder.
And Then The Containers
Where I think things get interesting-er (tee hee) is when the actual file types don’t matter. I can’t wait for my computer to read me docs and pdfs (can already, but I have to think about it). I am anxious for my iPod to know that I’m not paying attention to the screen so it can just serve me the audio stream not the video. I want search to pop the various surface tensions formerly known as files and find what matters without regard for the artificial organizational structure of a file.
What will it feel like when my phone knows Katrina’s emails were a grocery list, driving directions, and a love letter without me having to tell it? How cool will it be when there isn’t spam because my gateways know that I know you, and can tell reasonably well when someone else is being silly? As data becomes more alive, aware, meta-tagged, and organically crusty with context, some of what we fret over today just plain goes away. (New frets to follow, I’m sure).
One last refrain on the smarter-data-vanquishes-spam concept. If you come up to me in person, and I know you, what you’ll likely tell me next won’t be spam. If you come up to me and I don’t know you, I’ll be listening for spam (your pitch, your whatever). So, as my systems get smarter, and more context-aware, it will feel the same way. Make sense?
Smarter and Dumber
One sexy thing about the XO laptop is that it has a functioning mesh network built in. When Violette’s arrives (I ordered one yesterday through the Give 1 Get 1 program), I want to better understand HOW mesh networks do what they do. Why? Because I believe that as networks get smarter, they get dumber in the good sense. For example, in my house, as it’s all Apple hardware, it’s really easy to hook to the network and see each other, etc. Mesh networks are even simpler than that.
I’m excited for when my devices do this. I can’t wait for my phone to know it’s near my laptop and throw SMS text messages into an IM window instead of making me look down at the phone. I’m excited for the idea of sliding a movie I’m watching on my laptop sideways onto my iPod and take it down to the laundry room with me while I fold the towels.
As hardware and systems get smarter, the barrier to connectivity goes down greatly, and this means we’ll have better opportunities to use our devices in more novel ways. There’s a design video from Nokia showing two people at a social mixer physically tapping their phones together, and contact information is exchanged this way. I think that’s SO close to being real, and I can’t wait.
Collaboration Without Borders
Businesses are slowly learning that work doesn’t stop at the edges of their employees’ desktops. They are discovering the value of having remote workers, but further, they’re learning that non-top-secret work (and so little of what we REALLY do in a day is top secret) can go faster and easier as a collaboration. Working inside and outside the payroll structure is more and more the norm. As coworking projects are gaining steam, I want technologies to follow suit so that our devices, our data, and the essence of sharing moves nicely back and forth between colleagues and our mutual devices.
Further, I can’t wait for my laptop and my iPod and my phone and my home computer to all share the same storage, and awareness, and even portions of the same identity. I’m excited for my gear to collaborate amongst itself without me thinking as much about it. For instance, when will the software licenses I purchase know that I’m visiting a friend’s house and let me use the same software there without me lugging along my laptop?
Social Media In That Future
Social media is a construct we use to explain how we’re communicating and expressing ourselves. Podcasting is a technology, but it basically allows us to convey pictures in voice in a downloadable, RSS-alerting way. Nearly none of those bits and parts (technology-speaking) are the end point. People working on creating lifestreams (collections of their various media sources) are probably closer to the reality that I see happening. I think there will be some form of subscription-like activity, but it will be much simpler, and it will have some context to it. Similar to the up-and-down mixers on the Facebook news stream page, we’ll be able to dial up people’s streams that have more importance to certain things, and we’ll be able to dial down their streams where they aren’t as pertinent.
The things we make, and the ways we communicate it should eventually change to have more context and flow to them, the same as the other data in our lives. Imagine showing up at a conference, and your phone scans the other phones to see who’s beacons are shining as “friend.” You note 11 friends in the vicinity. Imagine their audio and video and text media all floating across your phone as it parses out some sense of a story of these 11 people’s most recent media over the last several days.
Suddenly, you know that Bonnie’s son turned 6, and that he and his friends made their own Star Wars movie out of the new LucasClips application. You know that Sanjay’s mother died, and that he just got back from Pune. You know that Ray just changed jobs (thanks, LinkedIN), and that Jeff is in his seventh season of his show, and that ABC has just added two characters to it on sourceloan, so now Jeff can mash up two of Lost Season IX’s hottest characters with his other stars.
Kitchen Futures
I’m sitting in a sunbeam in my kitchen on the day after Thanksgiving, thinking and musing about these things. Why? Because I believe that there are ways we can contribute, and ways to consider where things are going, and that these things might be helpful for us in contemplating what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, and why. For instance, I plan to learn how mesh networks work. I plan to better understand the FOAF Project, and I want to think about how context overlays with other metadata.
What does it make you think about? Where am I dead wrong in your reckoning? What does this all say to you?