If you have been following the news lately, the web is undergoing a transformation. This transformation is a good thing; it simplifies the communication between man and machine, it breaks the rules of distance and introduces software which bring the cyberspace to unknown pathways. Surely, that is a good thing.
But there is a problem behind this transformation. It is not actually a transformation, it is “transformations”. Three different movements are striving to bring the web into its new phase and revolutionize it.

The semantic web

The semantic web has been online for quite some time now. We hear it, some even see it, but in the end it still isn’ t there. The semantic web will give the tools to the machines to understand and learn the semantic language of humans. It will be based on openness and it will bring software, which will work in a traditional emergent manner.
The semantic web (or web 3.0 or Giant Global Graph - GGG) is

about letting it be connected to data from peer sites. It is about letting it be joined to data from other applications.

The Data Portability project, OpenId and even google’s new social graph are certainly steps towards this direction.

Web of Data

Then we have the Web of Data. Something I first read about yesterday at Richard MacManus’ post. Richard writes about a speech Tom Coates gave, talking among other about the world of tomorrow. According to Coates’ vision the cyberspace will invade real life:

1. A physical object responds to or visualizes data from the network.
2. Interacting with a physical object allows people to change data stored in the network.
3. A physical object acts as a sensor that writes to the web of data.

This is surely an enlightening view of the future, a view we have probably only seen in science fiction movies. Still Tom Coates brings examples of software already succeeding in the field of web-real life interaction.

Revolutionary Software

Finally, Robert Scoble wrote yesterday about a new software currently under development in Microsoft, which will change the digital world. NetMeeting, Netscape and Photoshop were such software. Now Microsoft works on something similarly radical. We all have to wait unti the 27th of September for more information, but Scoble sounds fascinated already.

Decentralization of objectives

All these - and probably more projects that we’ve not heard of yet - are encouraging efforts to develop and evolve the web. I eagerly wait to see how things online will develop. But I also see a small problem here: decentralization.
I’ve already written, that I’m an advocate of decentralization. Many different agents working on a goal, without any central control. But here we are not seeing decentralization of work, but decentralization of goals.
Every institute is trying to change the web on its own way, without collaborating with others. I have the feeling they all have the same upper goal (revolutionizing the web), but different means to achieve it. Decentralization of objectives usually brings confound, disorientation and certainly failure.

Competition is always a parameter of evolution in any market. But if we see the development of the web’s next generation as a race, then we also agree on its commercialization.

Being supportive and being skeptical

Forgive me for being biased on this one, but I tend to trust more the vision of the semantic web for 3 reasons:

1. It is supported by the World Wide Web Consortium, an institution which constantly proves its belief in openness and innovation.
2. It is the only vision of the next Web, that we know so many about and therefore proves its openness.
3. It gives the tools for better commercial interactions, but it doesn’t make the web commercial.

Why I’m skeptical about the other innovations.

1. Tom Coates talks about the importance of openness of data (weblogs, RSS), but he directs his remarks to marketing: being open will drive people to your service, people will pay for it, make your service more attractive, etc.
2. Microsoft is a universal colossus based on providing software to the market and doing its best to keep them on top. I acknowledge Microsoft’s contribution to the web and digitalization in general, but I’m very skeptical on any software it provides. The United States vs. Microsoft case proves my skepticism.

I point out here, that the nature of the other visions (a presentation I didn’t attend to and a software not yet published) does not allow me to be subjective. My skepticism is based on prior experience and not on the current projects. So please any oppositions, feedback, additional information will be appreciated.

Micha informed me the other day of a conference taking place in Potsdam, Germany from the 8th to 10th of May on the philosophy of computer games. I find it to be a great opportunity for users and players to see games under a completely new perspective.

Jesper Juul and Ian Bogost, both theorists of video game studies will give keynote talks and more are yet to be announced. But the conference will not constitute solely on discussions. Scholars who take a professional interest in the phenomenon of computer games are invited to submit papers to the the international conference “The Philosophy of Computer Games 2008″.

I’ve read somewhere that games should NEVER take themselves too seriously. This conference and the theory of video games, puts this opinion under debate. Although the theory of games is relatively young, it certainly contributes in a discourse about:

action | space

Issues relating to the experiential, interactional and cognitive dimensions of computer game play.

What is the nature of perceptual experience in game space? How should we understand the relationship between action, interaction and space in computer game environments? How should we think about players’ aesthetic, emotive and(/or) rational responses to what goes on inside the game space?

ethics / politics

What are the ethical responsibilities of game-makers in exerting influence on individual gamers and society in general? What role, if any, can games serve as a critical cultural corrective in relation to traditional forms of media and communicative practices, for example in economy and politics?

Also: what is the nature of the ethical norms that apply within the gaming context, and what are the factors that allow or delimit philosophical justifications of their application there or elsewhere?

borders between play and reality

Terms such as “fictionality”, “virtuality”, “simulation” or “representation” are often used to indicate specific functions of objects in games.

But what is the nature of the phenomena these terms refer to in the interactive field of game play? And what is the structure of gaming-processes? What is the mediality of digital games?

We are especially interested in discussions that aim at how the notion of a self-contained “magic circle” - representing an imagined border between play and reality, or the internal and external limits of game-programs - is being challenged by forms of individual action and social inter action which tend to transcend such limits.

Open Invitation

These are just some subjects that will be covered in the conference. If you have any work regarding the topic, you are invited to submit it until the 15th of February.

I know, there is not much time left, but it is certainly worth it. This is an international conference with the collaboration of Universities from Germany, Oslo, Italy and Denmark. Your work will certainly be heard here.

Of course you are also invited to visit the conference. The University of Potsdam has started an effort to provide residence to visitors having a hard time finding a place to stay. Students and conference organizers are welcoming visitors and doing their best locating accommodation and even opening their own homes.

For more information about the conference visit gamephilosophy.org.

For more information about the philosophy of computer games take a look at: The Digiplay Initiative: A collaborative effort on understanding digital games.

A post in the ReadWriteWeb a couple of days ago, guided me to a very interesting document. A summary of Project10X’s Semantic Wave 2008 Report (available here).
I just finished reading the report, which provides some very insightful information about web 3.0. The semantic web will transform the web from an information-centric to a knowledge-centric system, by developing 4 fundamental attributes:

1. Knowledge

The web is a fragmented place. Knowledge is scattered in all its corners, sometimes locked in operating systems and complex algorithms. The semantic web, will pursue to change this. It will facilitate technologies, which will extract knowledge and

will enable communities to create, curate, and share knowledge in human readable and machine executable forms.

2. Transparency

Information will evolve in knowledge, through its encoding in a semantic form, which will be transparent and accessible at any time to any machine. Knowledge was previously stored either in human readable or in machine readable form. In the semantic web, it will be stored transparently, so that users and machines will be able to read the same piece of data. In that way, it will be possible for data to be used, validated and combined with other data. This will allow

a system to “learn” to do things that the system designer did not anticipate.

3. Connectivity

To overcome the limitations and restrictions of OS platforms, the semantic web will encourage a real time usage of automated and semi-automated methods, of interaction between man and machine:

Web-tops; platforms spanning multiple OSs connected over the internet
Mash-ups; two or more data sources or works combined to become a new data source or work
Context-aware mobility; dynamic composition and personalization of services across devices, networks, locations, and user circumstances and
Semantic service oriented architectures; using machine-interpretable descriptions of policies and services o automate discovery, negotiation, adaptation, composition invocation, and monitoring of web services.

4. Technology

The key of the sematic web is the usage of technologies, which represent meanings and knowledge seperately from content, in order to be interpretable from humans and machines. Such representations will range from pattern recognition, analogy and reasoning with uncertains to deep linguistics and causality.

The integration of social Web and semantic technologies in Web 3.0 allows new synergy that lowers the cost of data and knowledge creation, and raises the computational value of gathering.

The semantic technologies, which will power Web 3.0 will concentrate on:

• Semantic user experience (how the user comprehends things)

• Semantic social computing (how users communicate and collaborate)

• Semantic applications and things (how products and behaviors can be seen empirically and objectively)

• Semantic infrastructure (interobjective network-centric systems and ecosystems)

• Semantic development (how meanings and systems can share what they know)

Epilogue

The report refers also to semantic technology markets and other interesting points. It explains the the information I shortly mentioned above very well and I definetely suggest you to read it.

The 4 attributes I listed above gave me the impression, that they are the key traits, which will revolutionize the online experience. Where, the emergent behavior of the whole system will bring user interaction in new levels. I believe, that the development of services such as data portability and openID are steps to this direction. But, to a certain degree, it is a personal preference.

I’m interested to see, which attributes of the semantic web do you find most revolutionary.

I had a post the other day about Facebook and one of its rivals “Kaioo” and the discussion came to the subject of data portability.
M@ri@nn@ expressed her skepticism on the project. This short video (found at Partcls.blog) sumarizes the concept of data portability very well. Enjoy.

Sorry, I had to remove the video because it really messed up with the look of the blog…

Get involved in data portability.

Yes, the music industry is evolving. And this time, numbers are not the ones talking, its in the news.

• Motorola acquires online music store SoundBuzz
• Sony BMW confirms DRM free music, but will force customers to visit a store to buy it I agree with TechCrunch on this one.
  

  Sony BMG will become the last of the big four record companies to sell DRM free music, but with one very stupid catch.

• Napster to offer DRM-free mp3 downloads

A recent post in digital media world called ‘Facebored‘ pointed out that Facebook starts getting kind of boring. Not because it doesn’t update its applications or services, but simply because its bubble has now burst. I’ve heard of Facebook for quite some time but really didn’t feel the need to join the community. Now that I did - mostly out of curiosity - I can really associate with the digital media post.

The -in a sense- sudden growth of the Twitter community makes me feel the same. I don’t see the need to join twitter; let me explain why:

1. Sometimes, I enjoy being alone. (with my mobile turned off)
2. It’s addictive.
3. We have enough connectivity, thank you.
4. Like ‘Nobody’ said in the Jim Jarmusch film Dead Man: “you talk too much and say nothing”
5. Too many people know too much about each other (already)
6. Sometimes, it seems like spam.
7. “Having a blast with my nephews”, “enjoying paris by night”, “changing my ringtone”. *precious*
8. information and knowledge in 140 characters just doesn’t feel right.
9. it’s a marketing tool. (hurrae! more advertising)
10. it’s an ego distillery.
11. many headlines and no news.
12. inspite of its affinity to mobile technology, it remains a web application.

and by the way, why do you like mobile phones?

Nearly 10,000 U.S. adults were asked in a survey: How likely would you be to implant a device into your brain that enabled you to use your mind to access the internet if it could be done safely? 11% of the responses were prone to accepting such a perspective.

Marshall Kirkpatrick expressed today his opposition to the idea of an “internet brain implant“.

I find the notion of a web chip (a chip in general actually) oblique as it is; but it also makes me think. The points, that Marshall highlights are well argumented, but I believe we are already addicted to technology in a very high degree. I talk about a degree, where technology (the web, mobile phones, ipods, whatever) are already implanted to our (at least mental) existence. We can’t step out of our front door without our mobile phones and we can’t pass couple of days without checking our emails (I don’t know about you, but without internet I feel physically weak). The notion of media as extensions of ourselves (expressed by McLuhan) is becoming more realistic every day. Let me elaborate.

• Privacy. Marshall Kirkpatrick sees the idea of ‘privacy as an illusion’ nowadays as a hyperbole. I disagree. Anyone can easily ‘google’ your name and find information about you. Your habits online are open for anyone to see. And even without google, we have blogs, facebook, myspace and hundreds more communities which in one way or another define us. But also the mobile culture, leaves little room to privacy. We are reachable everywhere and anytime. Just call. And have you noticed someting else? When someone calls us on the mobile phone, his first question is: Where are you? Privacy has a completely new meaning nowadays.
• Information overload. We are facing a paradox. On the one hand people complain about the information overload. On the other hand though, this overload has enabled a democratizition of media, given the public an incomparable variety of choices and encouraged a whole economics about the long trail of the web. We are standing between a paradise of choice and a paradox of choice. Maybe our hands are too slow to get to all this information (as Marshall Kirkpatrick says). But only because they just receive instructions from our brain, bacause they are mediators. So maybe it would be better if we would let our brain do the work. Forget mediators.

Services like twitter show that maybe people don’t want “…a private place to hatch [their] plots”. They don’t even care for the information overload. Maybe they just need to be constantly occupied, to be in constant socialization. Information like “I’m waiting for my roommate to wake up, so that we can clean up the house” or “just put the kids to bed. ready for bed myself” REALLY make me think.

If I were to summarize my argument it would be: We are already addicted to some media and use them so often, as if they were an implant in our heads. Under that perspective, I don’t see the difference.

I suppose such an internet chip, could make many popular technologies obsolete. Who would need a mobile phone, an ipod or a laptop? You got it all in your head. When you want to be alone (if ever) just state ‘out for lunch’ or ‘brb’ or even ‘offline’.

And you can cheat on exams, just wiki everything. If you dare to trust wikipedia.

Boring meeting? Play World of Warcraft.

Boring sex life? Let your ‘imagination’ free.

After all its all in your head.

And if you are skeptical about the big vendors controlling your brain chip, install linux.