This example usage of the Google AJAX Search API in TypePad should stop you in your tracks like it did me. We've been watching the growing widgetization of the blogosphere for a while now but to observe the search results displayed not in the sidebar but in the main post column should drive home the message that we're witnessing a full transplantation of the heart of the computing environment.
We're abstracting everything to the cloud, moving away from the isolated desktop and onto the social webtop. Whether it's MySpace, MyBlog, MyStartPage, MySocialNetwork, MySecondLife, MyPortal, MyAgent, MyProxy or MyIdentity, its all converging towards a shared representation of our digital-selves. You might call it MyAvatar.
Today we compartmentalize our blogs into the passive (content) and the active (widgets). But in future there will be no distinction, no separation between the two. MyAvatar will be my online essence. You won't read it you'll interact with it.
We don't separate our lives into inputs and outputs, we just live. Neither will we divide our online time between publishing and consuming. A blog is annotated consumption. MyAvatar will be my digital life, an amorphous cloud of interactivity.
We're moving to the era of the World Live Web, the Web of what's happening now. Stowe Boyd calls it the death of the browser. That's because we browse compilations. We don't browse conversations. We tune into them, we live them. The Wide Web was a library, the Live Web is... life.
October 04, 2006
Damn, that is impressive!
Posted by: maca | October 04, 2006 at 03:54 PM