When I speak to my high school sons about what I had to work with when I was in college, they have no clue. Sometimes we'll see an older movie and I'll shout out, "those are key punch cards!" They really can't believe we went through that kind of agony to get a small program to run. They have grown up on the computer and on the web. When my 16-year old was in first grade, his teacher found age-appropriate web sites for research on bears. She formed groups of three and had them create "reports" together. About one sentence or so per kid, with a best effort illustration and then the group presented to the class. My first grader was on the web, doing research. Of all the animals I knew about being an animal science major, he got one I didn't know, the Sun Bear of Asia. Today this child can go anywhere and do almost anything without fear on the web. He is the one who is truly ready for the next 5000 days of the web as he has grown and changed and adapted as it has during its first 5000 days.
I appreciated the comparisons to the human brain as it stands after the first 5000 days, but I'm not sure I agree that it will grow to the proportions that he estimates (in HB) within the next 5000 days. I can already see the personalization happening. When I enter the Amazon website, it knows who I am and has suggestions for books I may want to buy based on my most recent purchases. So who figured out the formula to create that kind of alignment for a customer? I do believe it had to be a human brain and not the AI of the web.
When he spoke of linking, it's all done by choice by the user. Yes, it's out there and possible. But, he made it seem as though there was some greater body than the human who was creating these links. At this point we've had experience creating the hyperlink, and we've all made choices about where to send our viewers. It's not really done by the ONE, but by people. I have great hopes for the upcoming generations of web-users. I think that there will be great opportunities and advances that at this point we can not even imagine.
Melissa
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You bring up many good points, Melissa. The whole personalization thing kind of bothers me and I guess I'm just old school in that way. I really don't like that all these sites know who I am, and at the same time it is convenient. I won't share addresses through Facebook for anything. I refuse all those little games and causes there for the same reason. I just don't want Facebook to have charge of my address book!
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