Where is the Web Going? | Hacker News Reader

Where is the Web Going?

nirandfar.com

41 pointstadruj22 comments

" Within the next few years, technology will improve your life in ways you can scarcely imagine."

I doubt this. It would be nice if there were some details provided with such a grand statement.

Well, the very point being made is that details can't be provided - we can "scarcely imagine" them. But if you look to the past, I think you can draw parallels that give the author the benefit of the doubt here. Take a few select years from the last few decades and look at how "your life" may have changed as a direct result of technology in the time span of a few years. Around 1992, the Internet began to fundamentally alter most people's[1] lives for the better. Most of them never saw it coming. In 2008 or so, the smartphone app revolution altered developer's lives in a huge way. The examples abound, but of course it depends on who you are and what "your life" is. None of this will affect the solitary farmer in China - at least not directly, nor for a while.

[1] in the developed world. See ~2012 for the developing world.

Let me get this straight here. Bookmarking, re-tweeting, and posting links on tumblr count as content creation for the purposes of this article?

I'm a bit incredulous as I don't really see it as such. I'd venture to say that you still only have ~1% of users creating content with any substance, let alone quality.

Well, technically, doing those things (re-tweeting, posting links, etc.) creates content... Substance and quality notwithstanding.

It creates data, but I'm not sure if it can be called content.

The aggregation of data can be considered content, such as the yellow pages or delicious, which, I think can also be copyrighted. So if your intent is to collect links to content, I would say technically, you are creating content. Look at this site, at least at the top level.

I don't consider the Yellow Pages to be content, just hard-to-gather data. For this site, the top level is data which points to content. The comments are the content, for me.

Aggregating data is content if the data in aggregate has more value than the pieces do independently. Isn't that essentially what all content is: a new organization of pre-existing data that has more value than the pieces separately? A song is a particular ordered collection of sounds that has more value than its individual pieces.

If posting links was enough to "create content", we could automate a vast increase in content. Of course, that's nonsense.

What creates content, arguably, is posting the links in a useful context (and something as simple as knowing your friend likes these might create the context). I think that value is real (and is reflected in services like Twitter), but there are some stark limits because my time/interest in consuming that kind of content is limited. Services that help me navigate the sea of data to effectively find the pearls of interest will have value. But just providing more ocean to search through is of limited direct interest...

This.

Simply posting something that already exists, be it through a Tweet or a link or what-have-you, does not create anything of value.

However, creating said link with a short description or within the context of a greater article does create value. It's not a huge amount of value, but I know that I, personally, am much more likely to examine a link posted by someone if they explain what it is about and that explanation is both interesting and relevant.

Agreed. Sites like Tumblr and Twitter are mostly full of people reblogging and retweeting other people's posts, and the source posts are often things that have been posted before. Many Internet users have short memories, and even shorter attention spans.

The Internet is increasing full of people linking to content, instead of creating it, and there's a fine line between "curating" links and simply spamming them.

A single instance of creating a link to a post that exists is probably not content creation. But curating an interesting/topical stream of content surely is.

As discussed in other threads [0], Letters of Note, for example, provides a context for its instances of curated content that provide a valuable resource for someone interested in the subject matter.

And let's not forget that Google is an example of curation that provides immense value. Google search doesn't provide any new information, but it surfaces existing information in a context that's valuable.

[0]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3534574

By designing new interfaces, and suddenly making information accessible...

This is a very important point. Although we do harness a lot of our focus on creating "new and innovative" products, we mustn't forget about the less-fun industries that still effect our lives daily. The way that we fix these industries is through the interface and how we interact with and manipulate that data (e.g. medical records, tax information, etc.). Take what we've learned from the companies mentioned here (e.g. Tumblr, Twitter, Pinterest) and apply it to existing industries.

I agree with the characterization of the past but I don't think curating is the answer either. You can't easily distill quality content out of a sea of junk. Much of the best content on the web still comes from traditional editorial organisations like NYT, Economist, etc. Free-for all social content works great for sites like StackExchange but I don't even think Quora, which is kind of like a curator, is going anywhere.

"...I don't think curating is the answer either. You can't easily distill quality content out of a sea of junk."

These two sentiments seem contradictory to me. The fact that it's not easy to filter for quality is what makes curation valuable.

I'm not sure if the dichotomy presented is correct, though. Really, all the old institutions like the ones you state, are in some sense curators. They curate news, fact, analysis, etc. The democratization of content creation and the decoupling of creation and curation means it'll be easier for amateurs to participate without going through the old bureacratic regimes these institutions represent.

I think the more interesting frontier is the digital curation by human/machine teams. You can understand Google and Facebook as curation, too, but they use a combination of human and algorithmic curation (more G than FB), and to me the Tumblrs and Quoras seem like a step back toward more heavily human-curated. I'll be more interested to see more combinations of different people and different algorithms working on different data.

Ok, but distill != filter. My experience is that no matter whether man or machine filters content it will not be as good as an expert sitting down authoring content.

"Whereas Web 1.0 was characterized by content published from one-to-many and social media was about easily creating and sharing content, from many-to-many, the curated web is about capturing and collecting only the content that matters, from many-to-one."

True story. Personalization is the future. Too many content so far.. take it.. examine it.. deliver it to each person separetely..

Don't be misled into believing that the web is "going" somewhere merely due to the success of some high profile growth in certain areas.

Where is the web going?

Everywhere.

If you don't believe that the web will become the backbone of human communication and the primary repository of recorded knowledge then you simply aren't paying attention. Facebook and tumblr are interesting sideshows but they are nothing compared to the real growth of the web, which is proceeding slowly but surely in the background largely without fanfair.

I don't think Pinterest is an example of the curated web. It's 4chan for the scrapbooking crowd. None of the content seems intended to last as some sort of resource, it is essentially Facebook without anything but the photo-sharing. Like 4chan, it's a stream of experience where any meaning the content may have is transient.

There's also Del.icio.us as a collection/curation platform somewhere between Twitter and Tumblr.

I've been using delicious again as my bookmarking and curation platform of choice.

Anyway, I think the author forgot about delicious and flickr, which started in the early 2000's peaking in media hype around 2005, which sort of changes his graph and thesis. It's no longer a nice progression of up and to the right. He just picked out examples that supported his view, and ignore the others that don't.

Flickr was a failed attempt to understand users and make it simple. It wasn't made for the masses and there was too much friction.

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