The History of the Internet and Our HyperLocal Future: Part 2 of 2.

Part One

Yesterday was a big picture of where the internet has come from and where we are today. Now I’d like to think a bit about where it’s going and will be 5 years from now.

So there’s this new idea (really nothing more than a buzz-word at this point) that is starting to be thrown around . . . called hyperlocality, or hyperlocal.

Basically the hyper means linked, clickable, or hypertext (such as when you click a link on a website) and local, well it means local.

What is being thought about now with these new developments in technology – that I’ll get into in a moment – is how the internet is beginning to shift from the virtual world into our daily concrete reality. So that in the very near future, you will be able to walk down your street, take a picture of a building or a place, have your phone automatically scan the depths (read archives) of the internet to pinpoint your location.

In a sense, to be hyperlocal, is to have the “real world” become “clickable” or “hyper-linked”.

Whereas before the internet always served in sort of a 3rd person role. You enter in information, you print out an aerial map that looks down on your route, and you follow a series of directions. Now the internet takes more of a 1st person role. It becomes you and you become it. You take a picture (i.e. reads your mind/eyes) and prompts you where to go.

In this small transition alone, the internet has moved from being a static purveyor of information to taking a life of its own, able to read and process information in very similar fashion to how we do it.

With the creation of metadata websites like Flickr, which now allow for what is called a GeoTag. Meaning that when you upload your photos now, you can tag that with actual longitude and latitude coordinates via a GoogleMaps mash-up. So now when you’re researching where you want go camping this weekend . . . you can actually pull up photos taken from a birds eye view of where you’re wanting to go. As opposed to an aerial third-person satellite image from space. It’s simply another layer of life that is being added to the internet.

Each layer that is added pushes it further and further away from the static, lifeless, encyclopedic, reciprocal of information that it once was.

Currently, even though the internet is starting to resemble more of a “web” (see yesterday’s post), the web is still very pointicular. Hyperlinks are simply connection points from one point to another. That’s all a link is, a direct connection from one point to the next.

But with hyperlocality and the introduction/transition from metadata in the virtual world to metadata in the real/local world, we’re beggining to move into a territory that is more or less just a big mass of interdependent parts that are moving in cohesion. Dare I even use the world “artificial intelligence”. Some are even trying to teach the internet how to think by using the brainpower of humans to help develop patterns and research that the computer can understand and process.

Watch this amazing video for quick picture of how the internet is changing into more of a mass-web.

Leonard Sweet used to talk about this future all the time. Where the ground we stand on is less concrete and more fluid. Less highway and more ocean.

On a concrete highway you have to follow a set specific path (think even about the rail system with trains and tracks from 100 years ago) from one location to the next. There is a certain way to drive. A certain speed limit. A certain directional flow to follow.

On the ocean navigation is a bit different. You still have currents, but some change from time to time. Going different directions at different times of the day and in different seasons. The ocean is wide-open. There are no lanes of traffic. There is no speed limit. You take the current where it takes you. Or if you’re smart enough to be able to determine your own direction (motor or sail), you’re still not confined to a series of roads. It’s open-water.

Think of a jelly-fish on the water. It sort of just goes where the current goes. But when you add a whole school of jellyfish, they usually get tangled and float in a big indistinguishable mass wherever the current takes them.

This is what the internet is becoming. A large fluid web that is beginning to leave the virtual and enter into the concrete. Thus hyperlocality.

It’s essentially doing away with the micro-connections (linear web), and creating macro-connections (integrated chaordic webs). Theories like The Long Tail and The Tipping Point illustrate this.

So questions . . .

What do we do in a world that is quickly become saturated with connectivity? By living with instant connectivity to information do we lose connections at the local level? If I can use my phone to scan geotags does that make me more or less connected if I don’t stop to ask a stranger for directions? What happens when the internet begins to take on a 1st person vantage point as opposed to a 3rd person? Where is the internet going? What happens to our identities in this integrated world? Although in many ways it’s flattened (non-hierarchial) is this a truly democratic or classless society that is being created? Although the gatekeepers are less and less the academic and political elite . . . are we now creating a class of technical elites, where only those who understand the technology and have the money to pay for it our able to “gatekeep”?

[tags]Hyperlocality, Hyperlocal, Open-Source, Web 2.0, History of Internet, Social Network[/tags]