Archive for April, 2006
As much as I am excited about new developments in the world of the interweb; flickr, youtube, digg, delicious…etc. I can’t but help think that the rush towards web 2.0 gold might have a touch of the March 2000s about it. Sure these services are really good and there is definately a tidal shift occurring in how we interact with the internet, but myspace worth gazillions? del.icio.us worth $15-20 million? I know markets just lurv growth rates and tend to dislike guaranteed sales within a narrow profit margin, but everyone made this mistake 6 years ago.
Yes, 25 people can run a company that has millions of users, and yes they can be loved and regarded as brilliant. But when you have 35,000 videos being uploaded a day with very little money incoming (apart from VC cash) then surely there is only so long this can last? Ah yes, advertising, that’ll save us. But why is this always seen as the golden child? If in doubt, google ads, but when do most net savvy users actually click on them? I am all for hyper targeted advertising, but probably will trust a blogger’s recommendation, than the ads placed on their site.
As you can see, it’s not that easy to get on a growth path and keep going. As for those spikes? Well, that’s just us (the technophiles) screwing around and playing with this stuff.
From: Reality Check 2.0
Maybe I am being a bit ‘bah humbug’ about this all, but I just can’t see how these companies are supposed to make any profit beyond covering the costs of hosting.
Don’t get me wrong, I think we are really in a web renaissance at the moment and are on the verge of seeing the web operating at its much hyped potential. Many of the new services have made my web experience much richer, but would I pay for them? Would I accept massively intrusive banner ads? Generally I see the system working on a socially beneficial level and on a much more micro level, not a monetary behemoth one. The moment people feel a service has been compromised by over-advertising, overly harsh controls or simply overuse, then a clone will pop up somewhere else (facebook, magnolia, google video) and the process will start all over again. I suppose my main beef with the way web 2.0 is going, is the hijacking by greedy corporates looking to make a quick buck.
I suppose that’s the nature of the beast, where there is genuine excitment and inovation, there will be dollar signs flashing in people’s eyes.
Location:
24 Inverness Street - Camden
Wow, now that’s a burger. Its my birthday today, so I decided to treat myself to a lunch. I had heard that Haché in Camden is meant to be the best gourmet burger restaurant in London, so there was really no competition to where I was going to go today.
The place is an excellent little restaurant (in the true sense of the word, not the McVersion), very cosy and comfortable yet still remaining functional (in a naughties eclectic, Japanese/Conran fusion sort of a way). Service was excellent and the choices wide, although for me it wasn’t difficult, always in these situations I plan to go for the exotic, only to come back to the down right traditional (The Canadian - steak, cheese and dry cure).
The food was quite excellent. Although a traditional construct, the taste was anything but, the addition of rocket really balanced the taste (as in many burgers the meat can sometimes be a little overpowering). All in all it was quite incredible. I had to take a break from time to time just to allow the two opposing forces inside me to decide on whether to devour the burger or simply marvel at it.
Of course the devouring won.
Really like this concept, imagining a world where objects, all objects (or at least a lot of them) produce data.
In everyware, the garment, the room and the street become sites of processing and mediation. Household objects from shower stalls to coffee pots are reimagined as places where facts about the world can be gathered, considered, and acted upon. And all the familiar rituals of daily life, things as fundamental as the way we wake up in the morning, get to work, or shop for our groceries, are remade as an intricate dance of information about ourselves, the state of the external world, and the options available to us at any given moment.
In all of these scenarios, there are powerful informatics underlying the apparent simplicity of the experience, but they never breach the surface of awareness: things Just Work. Rather than being filtered through the clumsy arcana of applications and files and sites, interactions with everyware feel natural, spontaneous, human. Ordinary people finally get to benefit from the full power of information technology, without having to absorb the esoteric bodies of knowledge on which it depends. And the sensation of use—even while managing an unceasing and torrential flow of data—is one of calm, of relaxed mastery.
The appeal of all this is easy to understand. Who wouldn’t desire a technology that promised to smooth the edges of modern life, subtly intervening on our behalf to guide us when we’re lost, and remind us of the things we’ve forgotten? Who could object to one that dispensed with the clutter of computers and other digital devices we live with, even while doing all the things they do better?
Similar to this pdf titled ‘A Manifesto for Networked Objects- Cohabiting with Pigeons, Arphids and Aibos in the Internet of Things’ by Bruce Sterling. by Julian Bleecker, a professor at USC.
Could you imagine the shear amount of data that is going to be available and accessible? At first I found it difficult to understand how we could possibly manage this torrent of data and I still have concerns about how we could process such a volume.
How do you avoid being flickr’d? How do you insure that you get flickr’d? Will flickr’ng cameras self-aggregate their photographic coverage, automatically discovering the flickr feeds of all the other cameras that were nearby them — at the fireworks show, or during the firehouse picnic — using NFC or Bluetooth
proximity-based networking?
All of these possibilities seem great, but I still see the need for an extremely powerful and knowledgeable layer that sits between this ‘Internet of Things’ and ourselves. In the same way that many people currently experience the Internet from a core base of about 5 websites (or so I have heard), a kind of self-imposed filter allowing access to the wider web. This relationship between user and website is extremely trustful and a similar relationship would need to exist between the user and this filtering layer (whatever form that takes). Due to the amount of data, this layer would need some form of programming about the users preferences and needs. Such needs would naturally change throughout the day, depending on mood, anxiety, personal and professional needs as well as other criteria.
Such needs seem to suggest that this layer would need to learn and grow with us, its teacher, constantly adjusting it’s knowledge about ourselves.
That level of interaction is somewhat interesting and many questions raise themselves. It questions the notion of our perception of ourselves, for example if such a layer exists and must learn from us, it is in essence part of us (or at least a microcosm of our identity), what if we don’t like what we see in said layer. What if it is fundamentally different to what our own perception is of ourselves? Also, what level of emotional training is necessary. Should the layer need to know when we are angry, happy, sad etc, should it make suggestions based on these moods, does it need to?
Maybe I am taking this issue a little far, but for such an interaction to be useful there would need to be a level of automation. It’s how far that level is taken that decides the complexity.
April 7th, 2006 3 Comments »