I’ve been reading a lot lately on the internet – on web 3.0, 4.0 and the future possible versions. At present all the x.0s are based on a few advances and best guesses. 3.0 talks about semantic web where the machines will talk with each other & parse information than just serving them on the screen, 4.0 hatches a plot about how inter-connectivity will help quick and intelligent coordination between governments, institutions, individuals and companies. 5.0 takes this even further – just guess everyone’s connected, the web has become powerful, there is instant info, and the machines can take intelligent decisions for everyone’s sake based upon logical inputs and artificial learning.
Think Terminator? “Humans will be back”!
As of now there’s the real time internet, let’s call it web 2.5x – the current unfolding phenomenon on social networks and other platforms. These are these real time tweets which announce moment by moment updates, location based applications which announce deals in the neighboring outlets, presence of friends around and even the names and historical significanced of buildings and places as I stroll by!
There are now umpteen sites which do this all – just go to mashable and do some research. Yes, foursquare is one, loopt is other and check out the 15 more sites, plus many more which are not mentioned!
Some where I read again, that Americans consume almost 34 GBs of data every day from all sources of media.
Frankly I have now seen people, including myself, multitasking with information (info-tasking) – talking on one hand and berrying on the other, even during meetings or family time. A patient ear to my wife or child while reading and typing on my blackberry do not go hand in hand and often end up with disastrous results, Yet I stay addicted – crack berry as they say (I am working on it).
The question I ponder then is that has this age of multitude of information, instant information and instant gratification significantly led to increase in standards of living, efficiencies, productivities, health, amount of available spare time and reduction in stress levels in human beings?
Or simply put, has my quality of living increased, or will it significantly in the future? Is info-tasking the new social behavior? Am I better off because I know the precise time when someone sneezed and twitted about it!