Tom says:
…it is more accurate to think of weblogs and wikis as work arounds for the broken parts of the web, rather than a new innovation.
Well, they are new innovations that repair some of what’s broken with the original intent of the Internet. But I can’t disagree that the shelf life of blogs and wikis as we know them probably isn’t too lengthy. It’s happening already, the seamless integration of these tools into browsers and Internet based networks. I still have a hard time wrapping my brain around what things will be like in say 10 years or so, but I’m almost positive it will be one stop shopping…no separate publishing software needed.
The Internet really has become my notebook in a big way. Used to be a pretty much just a research tool, but now it’s the warehousing and organizing tool as well. I can almost picture what a personal, interactive portal on the Internet might look and feel like…almost. Tom quotes Tim Berners-Lee whose original vision for the Internet was “to connect every person to every other person.” We’re getting there…
Actually, all the quotes are Alan Kay, although I’m sure tbl would agree with that quote.
Also, I think you might have tried to connect the quotes to each other a little more than I intended. They’re pretty much non sequiturs.
I certainly think weblogs and wikis are here to stay as a permanant part of the web infrastructure.
Ten years from now, or ten minutes from now, I would like to be able to drag a paragraph from a blog posting into the right place in the middle of a wiki page, all on a single website, and all from the same browser screen, since I’m wishing. When I run the cursor over a blog posting, I’d like to see links to wiki pages where it has been used. When I run the cursor over a wiki passage, I’d like to see links to the blog posts that served as source material.
I’d like one engine to search the whole site, and I’d like it to create an index of key terms with links to appropriate blog and wiki sections. I’d like the option of plugging in the blogs of wiki participants into the index and search, too.
That is, I’d like the process and the product elements of this wonderful realm to live and work together.