Dominiek.com

ReadWriteWeb has just posted their Web predictions for 2007 [1]. I think it’s nice that they omitted ‘2.0’ in that title. Just like in the first bubble, the Web has two types of trends, the potential and the hype. This has several consequences for 2007.

Andreas Kluth writes that the Web 2.0 hype will die down in 2007 [2]. Thanks to private equity, this bubble burst will be fairly discrete compared to the 2000 burst [3]. I think this will happen too, especially since US’ economy is becoming less optimistic. The first ones to go are probably some of the 400 social-networking alternatives or rounded-cornered BullshitR websites. However, this is just the ‘hype’ part of Web 2.0, not the potential/abstract part.

‘Don’t bet against the Internet’ is what Eric Schmidt advices. In his article in ‘the Economist’ he states: “The past few years have taught us that business models based on controlling consumers or content don’t work. Betting against the net is foolish because you’re betting against human ingenuity and creativity“ [4]. Indeed we have seen profound results of social-content websites like Wikipedia [5], another example can be found in the defeat of portals by search [6]. I think this is the ‘potential’ part of the new web, which can be summarized by a set of ground principles:

• clouds rather than trees
• simple rather than complex (KISS, Keep It Simple Stupid [7])
• loose rather than tight
• open rather than closed

references:

• [1] http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/biggest_web_trend_2007.php
• [2] “When the hype dies down”, The Economist, 21st edition, page 26
• [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble
• [4] “Don’t bet against the internet”, The Economist, 21st edition, page 124
• [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_of_Wikipedia
• [6] “The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture”, John Battelle
• [7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle

My English vocabulary is relatively small since it’s not my native language. Often I read materials on the Internet and sometimes I have to lookup some terms. If I wouldn’t lookup these new words, I will never learn them.

Secondly, it often happens that I know the meaning of some concepts, but I would like to know more about them. Lookup everything takes a while, which will disturb your mental model while reading.

This is why I started working on a little project to embed the knowledge of the Web in the reading process. I’m developing this thing in a pragmatic way using RubyOnRails. The main objectives are: I’ve just finished these objectives, which required writing a little HTML parser and an interface to use the Python NLP toolkit (which is far more superior then Ruby’s).

• Providing the content with a simple piece of code that can make any piece of HTML smarter.
• Using Natural Language Parsing (NLP) to pick out the important words.
• Using Princeton’s WordNet to explain basic concepts.

NLP screenshot	Wordnet screenshot

At the moment I’m refactoring the code so it can be distributed as a RubyOnRails plugin. For the near future the following features are on my TODO list:

• Interfacing with the Wikipedia encyclopaedia.
• Detecting concepts like ‘Software Engineer’ rather then detecting ‘Software’ and ‘Engineer’.
• Looking for alternatives forms of user/reading interaction.

Current code: laboratoire_nuage-101206.tar.gz (or browse)

Requires: Python-NLTK, Ruby-Linguistics, Ruby-WordNet and RubyOnRails

There’s something happening to the Human Race, something big. This change is not as big as ‘the Singularity’, but it might be related to it. How? I don’t know. The observed changes I will discuss manifest them in many fields of human participation. My perspective is mainly that of a Software Engineer who likes to write down what he thinks.

Let me tell you something about the Agile Manifesto. In Software Engineering there have always been many guidelines and methods for structuring the process of building software. A few years ago, some great software engineers sat together and swept away all these procedures and rules. Instead they defined 4 ground principles:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

Principle one and three say that building software should be more social. Principle two says that building software should be more pragmatic. Principle four indicates the need for more flexibility and adaptability. Processes based on these principles are more flexible and more adaptive to their environment. Examples of agile-methods are Extreme Programming and Scrum. I was surprised to see that Scrum, named after a rugby-scrum, is actually used in fields outside software engineering. Notable users are: Honda, Xerox and NEC. So even manufacturing industries are harvesting this power of adaptivity.

I think this phenomenon holds a lot of potential. The phenomenon can be seen as changing linear rules to non-linear principles that can be converted to guidelines that respect the environment and their social/human nature. In a sense we are advancing our Dualism -oriented minds to a new era of Pluralism, hence the name Neo-Pluralism. There are two main elements in this phenomenon: vagueness and adaptivity.

Vagueness, a common term in philosophy and linguistics. When can something be true or false? How many grains of sand do you need in order to call something ‘a heap of sand’? In the upcoming science ‘quantum computing’, a quantum computer bit, qubit, is neither true nor false. This trend of vagueness can be seen everywhere. An up-to-date example might be the way you get annoyed when you hear George W. Bush say ‘The Evil Terrorists’. When is something evil, when is something good? Do the Koran/Bible really say what you think they say? Humans are starting to realize that everything is contextual and subjective.

Adaptivity, a common term in biology and business. Darwin’s theory of natural selection relates to this phenomenon in an elegant way. Natural selection and genetic algorithms depend on chaos and mutations in order to adapt to the environment over many generations. Also, in some self-help books, we are toughed how we can live an adaptive principle-centered life in order to achieve success (7 Habits… by Covey ).

The substitution of rules and procedures with principles can also result in values on social responsibility rather then anonymous irresponsibility. A nice example of this is the recent removal of traffic signs and road lines in seven European cities. The project is already showing good results.

One might also wonder how the Internet, nicknamed, the Global Village, can have it’s role in all of this. I think her role will be very big. It could assist us in distributing opinions, relating information and contextualizing the chaos. These things aren’t new, the most basic example of this development is the current Folksonomy phenomenon in Web Land. In general I think the digital world will be a catalyst for many changes in our lives, pluralism is one of them.

As to summarize all of these brain farts, the observed changes can be ‘tagged’ as follows:

• importance of contextualizing and opinions
• embracing vagueness and chaos
• increase of adaptivity and flexibility
• more social responsibility
• things will be more informal (in all social, mathematical, philosophical and linguistic disciplines)