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On many occasions our studio has erupted into a heated debate about what web2.0 is, and whether or not it exists at all.  Without dropping any names, some of the most brilliant and forward thinking geeks I work with still stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the term, and insist that none of the tools we use to create web applications have changed.

I am of the opinion that web2.0 has fully evolved into much more than just the marketing buzzword that became so brutally misused from around 2004-2008.  I think we can feel comfortable using the phrase, without having to explain that it means more than just glossy button effects, or a nice reflection.

In short, our Internet has become social.  Almost everything you do on the Internet today involves some kind of social element.  You read a review before buying a product, you comment on a video you watched on YouTube, you upload a file for a work project, and you arrange a group meet-up on Facebook.  The social web has become synonymous with our modern lifestyle.

My enthusiasm for the next wave of online trends has obviously led to the question: What is Web3.0? It might be a little premature to start asking this question, but if we don’t start weighing up the possibilities, we’ll never know when it does actually hit us.

People tried for years to define Web2.0, and I think there might still be no concrete definition.  It was only until a few years after the term was coined that techies started to become more familiar with the constituting elements that were being referred to when someone actually said the word.  I don’t want to try and define Web3.0.  Tim Burners Lee wouldn’t even dare do that.  What I do want to highlight is some of the things I think will play a major part in the evolution of our current online experience into Web3.0:

•    Online communication is moving towards real-time

Connection speeds are continually increasing, and applications like Skype and twitter allow for instant updates to a wide audience of people anywhere around the globe.  Google recently announced Wave, their new take on collaboration.  Demonstrations have shown it to have letter by letter instant messaging.

•    The mobile web

Companies such as Nokia, Palm and Apple have already made a huge impact in mobile communication with their smart phones, but I feel we are still in for many exciting developments in this area. Geographical location is playing an increasingly large role in mobile communication, which in turn helps to deliver information more tailored toward a given context.

•    Semantics

Put simply, semantics is the study of language meaning.  Scientists are trying to teach machines and computers to understand humans better, so that we can access accurate search results that are relevant to the context in which we are searching. Google recently announced their “Rich Snippets” feature. A snippet is the little block of text that appears under a search result describing the webpage. This announcement entail that Google is now applying their algorithms to “highlight structured data embedded in web pages”. Put more simply, they are working towards translating data for the Semantic Web.

•    Opening up communication for everyone

There is a huge amount of data online, but unfortunately, most of that data is currently locked up in separate databases.  Making all online data available across all sites or applications will allow for totally unconnected sets of information to be compared and deliver more accurate results to our queries. The Wolframa|Alpha ‘computational knowledge engine’ is a good example of how an ecosystem of open databases could deliver concise information in easily digestible formats. In order to achieve this state of open communication, data should be allowed to flow freely to and from all sources.

The cool thing about these changes in trend is that nobody can really pin down when they start or end.  Just as the Web2.0 debate still rages, based on the argument that the technologies were already there, many of the building blocks of Web3.0 are already in place.  It is simply that over the next few years we’re going to find interesting new ways of stacking them, which will lead to a whole new world of experience for online users.

In this paper we will aim to critically assess the usability of British Airways self-service check-in kiosks, with regards to accessibility issues and the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995. We will specifically focus on the needs of blind and partially sighted users
who might depend on these services, whilst paying attention to issues raised by the context in which the kiosks are used, for example noise pollution or interference, physical design or ergonomics of the device and how the information structures of the software being used might impede or better assist users. Once we have analysed the current state of the service, we will propose design and interaction solutions aimed at improving its accessibility.

accessibility analysis (right click/save as to download the full essay)

The speech was co written with our company director, Damian Kimmelman, and the main idea was to show that new ideas do not necessarily mean re-inventing the wheel:

Thanks to the recent wave of consumer guilt, we have become pretty clued into the fact that one of the great problems facing our society is a gross dependence on disposable commodities. We are all, willingly or unwillingly, slaves to a social obsession with the latest and newest technologies around. We have worked ourselves into a constant state of paranoid demand for continuous upgrades. In this climate of fast product turnover, everything can and will be replaced by something that works better, looks better and sells better.

In the world of new media, this fickleness when it comes to technology puts pressure on creatives to continuously come up with something brand new. Yes I believe progress is essential to our society. But, why must progress always involve inventing something new?  I want to explore how we, as new media creatives, can set out to design the future by making use of the technologies that already exist. Opposing the culture of the disposable, something new can be created from something that already exists.
As I’ll go on to illustrate, the advantage of having this vast amount of technology available is that it opens up the possibility of repurposing technologies in a multitude of new and unforeseen ways.

The catalyst for this discussion came from a movie I watched as a child named ‘The Gods Must Be Crazy’. When a Coke bottle lands in the middle of the African desert, a bushman discovers the foreign object and decides to put it to good use. Strangers to its primary function, they use it to make music, carry water, grind seeds, print patterns and stretch snakeskins. This got me thinking about the benefits of being able to see the world around us from a point of innocence. If we consider something in a different light, perhaps we can put it to a different and even better use?

I’m sure a lot of you are familiar with the anecdote of the Apollo Space Program. This is a perfect example of when spending more money on new inventions isn’t always the best option. Whilst the US spent upwards of $1 million inventing a zero gravity pen that could write upside down in space, the Russians kept it simple, saved some money and used a pencil.
Someone once said that the greatest innovation comes from necessity and therefore poverty. Now we could argue the semantics of this statement till the cows come home, but I’ve got to admit there is some degree of truth in it. Change can certainly be seen as a product of need, invention a product of deficiency.

Coming from a new media background, we’re constantly trying to look at ways in which we can use current technologies to new effect. There are a broad range of re-purposing projects around that encourage and inform the work we do. From Apple’s innovative use of motion sensors in their iPods to the use of inkjet printers to print hearts, people have and continue to use existing technology to amazing ends.

Apple

Here are some of the more obvious examples. Some time ago Apple decided to define itself more as a software and hardware design company than a manufacturer. This in some waysgave them more time and energy to come up with design ideas for new products. Using sudden motion sensors, which traditionally act as hardware safety devices in laptops, Apple created a range of functions for the iPod and iPhone. The common accelerometer is used to rotate screen images on the iPods and play games on the iPhone by moving the device itself. Then there’s the Nintendo Wii which also relies on accelerometers for its motion sensor games.

This is the sort of stuff very much in the public eye that inspires others to design products that can change the world on a profound level.

Printing Hearts

From the cool to the life-changing, my next example of incredible re-innovation is Bio-printing. The future of tissue engineering no longer involves the laborious growth of organs in the lab from existing parts. Instead, thanks to biophysicist Gabor Forgacs, we can quite literally print hearts using the fundamental principles of inkjet printers. Droplets of ‘bio-ink’, which are clumps of cells a few hundred micrometers in diameter, are deposited on ‘bio-paper’ and built up to create the specific 3D cell structures required to generate various organs.  Depending on where the cells are placed and what the printer is instructed to do, any given structure can be created. And it all started with a chicken heart. Having printed layers of chicken cells using the device, they slowly started behaving like a real organ and after 19 hours started beating synchronously like a real heart. Really revolutionary stuff, and all from the inkjet printer, a 20-year-old technology.

The Village Phone

The next example of current technology being used for progressive purposes is the transfer of money via mobile phone. The Sente system is a good example of modern day social capitalism at play. Financial aid is sent to small towns and villages that lack the infrastructure that a stable banking system would provide via a pay as you go system. The money sender buys a mobile phone top-up voucher from their local seller and sends it to top up the phone of a village based middle man. This middle man then detracts his commission and passes on what remains of the credit to the person it is intended for. This means that funds can be transferred to communities at the touch of a button, despite the absence of banking structures.

Captcha

Many of you will be familiar with the Captcha system, if not by name then by those distorted boxes of text that we spend time typing out when entering secure web pages. The hours spent typing out these words, using human rather than computer labor, can be harnessed and put to another use. Already the guys at Carnegie Mellon have found a way to capitalise on these online hours by using the Captcha system to digitise books. By re-capturing phrases from scanned books, digital copy for the online texts is generated. This is making use of what I term the ‘human cloud’, in other words putting the existing infrastructure of human online activity to new use.

If this can be done with Captcha, what other online hours can be harvested? Think of the many thousands of hours spent online playing Solitaire. Could these processes be simultaneously contributing to a greater good? What is certainly ground breaking about Captcha is that it exemplifies this alternative way of ‘creating’ that fascinates me: the idea that the new can come straight out of the old and even mundane.

Where Do we Fit In?

So how does this all relate to what we do at VI? As I mentioned before, creativity can certainly be seen as a product of poverty. What I find exciting in web design is the great amount of restrictions placed on us forcing us to work that bit harder to come up with new and exciting functions and applications. We are limited by factors such as bandwidth, connection speed, screen resolution, file size and usability. Unlike other media areas, web developers are restricted to the world of the online. We have very strict parameters to work within.

However, I strongly believe that there is a lot out there in the online world that we are not making use of. We should force ourselves to confront our limitations and exploit them in order to be more creative.  For instance, there is so much more to explore with microphones and webcams. However, what’s stopping us from putting these systems to other and perhaps more useful purposes. One of the projects we are working on with a US partner demonstrates exactly what can be done by taking existing forms and bettering them. A step away from the video streaming that sites like YouTube have familiarised us with, our recent project for the Lockout music label uses video streaming at high definition no real loading time and no buffering. The video streams through a network of nodes that constantly communicate with each other to determine the fastest route from the source of the video to the user wishing to view it. This is the future of video streaming but is the result of improving on what exists, not striving for something totally new.

The purpose of this essay is to examine the current state of access to digital and information technology in developing countries.  A comparison will be drawn between ‘information rich’ and ‘information poor’ cultures in order to ascertain fundamental economical, literacy and political differences.  We shall examine some current initiatives being taken in order to overcome the current information gap between developed and developing countries.  The factors that are required to successfully implement these initiatives will be considered, along with their potential repercussions for both the cultures adopting these measures and those organizations or countries spearheading these initiatives.  Lastly we will examine the way in which the adoption and use of these new technologies might influence and change the way developing cultures interact both internally and globally.

Digital Divide (right click/save as to download the full essay)