The Future of the Web

Wired magazine, a magazine that does almost nothing but predict our techno-future gets it very wrong as often as not. Recently they've admitted to predicting the death of: commercial web publishing (April 1996), web browsers (March 1997), online song sharing (December 2002) and a few more where they could hardly have been wider of the mark.

If anyone does know, it ought to be inventor of the internet Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who I was lucky enough to hear speak on that very subject "The Future of the Web" last week. But he doesn't really do predictions and, if inventing the interwebs wasn't proof enough, that should confirm that he's a very clever man.

Sir Tim talked about two things, both of which he's working: on the Semantic Web, a complex system of making context links between data on the web that is at last looking near use, and a new academic discipline of Web Science.

Best described as a pulling together of the technology and the human, Web Science isn't about to predict anything but it does intend to help people to understand the unfathomably complex mesh of intelligence that you're staring at now (admittedly a fairly insignificant bit). The theory goes, if we can understand the internet then we may have a chance to shape it. Forget analysts predicting based on past behaviour, that's some power to wield.

But that's the future of the web itself -- the simple(ish) underlying technology -- what we'll actually use it for is almost completely unknown. Would you have predicted Facebook being a success? It's a sort of address book for people you don't want to talk to do, with the ability for grown-ups to send each other virtual drinks.

Would you have predicted that one of the internet stories of 2008 would be rickrolling? Not me, it's just a family friendly version of the trick link thing geeks have been doing for years.

The revival of the practical joke, years after even the French stopped finding clowns funny, if that's the sort of thing that's going to happen I'm not sure I want to know. So I'll ask a futurologist, or Alan Shearer.