A web nos próximos 15 anos, by Tim O’Reilly

Tim O’Reilly dá sua contribuição à BBC (entre outros “luminários da web”) sobre o que deve acontecer com a Web nos próximos 15 anos. Ele tem uma visão bem tecnólogo-McLuhan realista sem perder de vista os fatores essencias que permitem esse “novo Renascimento”. A resposta de Robert Scoble também vale a pena ler.

“(…) The fact that Tim Berners-Lee gave it away was so critical to that. l imagine if someone tried to commercialise it, maybe it would have taken off but that was what Microsoft and AOL tried to do. Free is such a powerful force in innovation. When I look at the future of the web as a concept as opposed to a specific technology we are really moving into a world where we live with display surfaces everywhere, independent devices all connected to the cloud, sensors everywhere. There are already sensors everywhere but they are just not connected yet. So we are going to see the phone network merge with the web, sensor networks merge with the web. I think we will even see the power network merge with the web. What we are really building is a global brand where all the computers in the world are connected, where all the devices in the world are connected, sometimes intermittently off and on, and all the people are connected. This is going to be a very different thing. It’s ironic that back in the 70s there was all this talk about global consciousness, ‘blah blah blah’, and it really is going to happen”
~ Tim O’Reilly, @BBC