Harnessing collective intelligence

Give something a label and immediately people begin to come up with their own definitions of what that label should be attached to. That is certainly what has happened with the Web 2.0 label, and this has led to interminable debates about what constitutes Web 2.0 and what does not. Most of these debates are sterile beyond belief because, of course, it is not the label that is important, nor even some purist, back-to-basics definition of what it might be, but the changing relationship between ourselves and the Web, and therefore our evolving relationships with each other arising out of our use of the Web in its new incarnations. If the underlying process is dynamic and evolving, then the definition has to be the same. I use the plural - 'incarnations'- deliberately. There may well be, as Tim O'Reilly says, a basic principle in Web 2.0, that it is now about 'harnessing collective intelligence,' but it is currently taking on a number of forms, developing along a number of strands, each of which might be sustained or not. I like that phrase - harnessing collective intelligence - and I like the way that Tim gives due recognition within the Web 2.0 umbrella to the potential to be derived from taking traditional client-based apps online, but in taking them further than is possible in their device-bound versions. So, for instance, Writely is an online word-processor. That is a good thing in itself. But if Writely can also be used as a basis for wiki-like working, all the better. The same goes for the Google Spreadsheets - collaborative 'what-if' analysis, for instance, would be a valuable tool. If we take that changing relationship between ourselves and the Web as the starting point, we therefore have to recognize that those first few examples of client-based apps moving online are just the first tiny ripples of a massive tidal wave that will sweep over us at some point in the future. With some prospects of universal broadband and easy access to the Web looking more and more like a realizable possibility - the only real doubt must be in how long it will take us to get there - all the major application-types will start to move online, and will all be web-based and therefore browser-delivered. Writely and its siblings are just the beginning, and possibly also just the start of a whole new business model for the eventual industry winners in this scenario! And, as Tim says, any software developer who simply turns their device-bound application into an identical web-based application, without leveraging the power of the Web in that transition, will fail. If I look at my own Mac OS X dock, I can see the full Microsoft Office suite, the full Adobe Creative suite, Acrobat, Marratech, Keynote 3.0, Pages, the full iLife suite, Garageband, MindManager, Filemaker Pro, Quicktime Pro, Audacity, a couple of FTP clients, and so on. The time will come - sooner or later - when all I will need in order to be fully productive will be a number of browsers (possibly just one - the device interface will simply be the browser). But all these applications will have to gain additional (Web 2.0?) capabilities as they make that transition fully to the Web. We have some halfway-house apps at the moment - think of iTunes or Google Earth - both browsers in their own right, but browsers with specific functions or ranges of functions. The 'Web as Platform', as some have called this phenomenon (reminiscent of Cisco's "The Network is the Platform") is very much part of the Web 2.0 thing. It this phenomenon above all that will create the conditions for a tremendous simplification of the devices we use to access the Web. When all our services, all our apps, much of our data (maybe all of that too) are held online instead of on a local hard drive or whatever, the gadgets we need will be very simple indeed. It is the 'Web as Platform' bit of Web 2.0, I feel, that will contribute most to closing the digital divide over time. We are just at the start of this process. Technorati Tags: web 2.0, tim o'reilly, web as platform, digital divide, futures

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© John Connell
The views expressed in this weblog are entirely my own and are not intended to reflect the views of any other individuals or organizations. All sources will be fully acknowledged.