Time To Take the Internet Seriously 175
santosh maharshi passes along an article on Edge by David Gelernter, the man who (according to the introduction) predicted the Web and first described cloud computing; he's also a Unabomber survivor. Gelernter makes 35 predictions and assertions, some brilliant, some dubious. "6. We know that the Internet creates 'information overload,' a problem with two parts: increasing number of information sources and increasing information flow per source. The first part is harder: it's more difficult to understand five people speaking simultaneously than one person talking fast — especially if you can tell the one person to stop temporarily, or go back and repeat. Integrating multiple information sources is crucial to solving information overload. Blogs and other anthology-sites integrate information from many sources. But we won't be able to solve the overload problem until each Internet user can choose for himself what sources to integrate, and can add to this mix the most important source of all: his own personal information — his email and other messages, reminders and documents of all sorts. To accomplish this, we merely need to turn the whole Cybersphere on its side, so that time instead of space is the main axis. ... 14. The structure called a cyberstream or lifestream is better suited to the Internet than a conventional website because it shows information-in-motion, a rushing flow of fresh information instead of a stagnant pool."
Serious (Score:5, Funny)
As we all know, the Internet is serious business.
http://drunkenachura.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/internet-serious-business.jpg [wordpress.com]
Seriously, (Score:4, Funny)
Where are we going to take it?
And did Al Gore give us a curfew?
Re:Serious (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Take the internet seriously? (Score:5, Funny)
?! Stop staring at me, goddammit! I'm schizophrenic and you're goddamn staring is exacerbating my paranoia! FUCK!!
Time to start taking ourselves too seriously (Score:5, Funny)
No moment in technology history has ever been more exciting or dangerous than now, when I started speaking.
Re:Take the internet seriously? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:condition: buzzword alert (Score:3, Funny)
Encountering a "virtual" is just telling you that you are going to read a lot of rubbish and yet end up having to do all the thinking yourself anyway.
Ask any C++ programmer, he'll agree.
Re:Serious (Score:5, Funny)
Oh Great!, Now I have to marry the internet?
Re:Serious (Score:3, Funny)
Dude, I feel your pain. Same thing happened to my internet.
When we first met, she gave me, all shy and embarrassed, her first 176x144 animated gift of a naked girl. After that, mountains of pornography throughout our good years together. Now that we are married, she won't even let me download a single boob. All I get from her is "404 - I have a headache". I'm still getting some action from a clandestine ISP that delivers binary groups to me. If she ever finds out about eth0:1, I'm dead.
Re:Impossible. (Score:2, Funny)
>I've never heard of him before
You have not been paying attention, and this reflects badly on you.