¿Whats at stake?

The idea:

How will technology, hyperconnectivity, social networking, media…. Change the way we experience the environment and interact with each other?  How can we begin to design for that changed condition?

As technology advances so does the way we interact with it.  One comment from the midterm jury was, what is at stake in the future and what does that mean for times square?  What will technology be like in 20 years and how can we design for that?  Will Times Square be out dated?  Is times Square really so integrated when it comes to technology or is it just a manifestation of web 1.0?  If we are making the transition to web 2.0 (or possibly already deep into it) now, what is web 3.0 and how will that change or shape our interactions with it and others in the future?  Where does times Square fit into the mix?  Sure we think of it as being a show for interactive video and advertisements but in the grand sceme it is all operating in the realm of web 1.0 .  can this project become the catalyst that brings times square into the world of web 3.0.  so here is a bit about on the web versions and what they mean.

Web 3.0  Semantic Web

A simple wikipedia search defines Web 3.0 as a “web of data”.  A web that enables machines to understand the meaning or semantics of the information on the world wide web.  It extends the human readable hyperlinked pages by adding to them pages of metadata which the computer can read.  This is info on the nature of the pages and how they relate to each other.  So what does this mean?

The Evolution of the web:

Web 1.0

The web began as an informational portal, basically a read-only web.  Content was though of in terms of ownership and the game was to be the first to own the content that was hot at the time.  The web was generally thought of as a divided array of usable directories and everyone (everyone ‘using’ the web) would own a their own little slice of it in the form of simple home pages.  This was primarily used for and thought of as a business tool.

Web 2.0

In the notions of web 2.0 we see the move toward a read-write version of the web.  Homepages became blogs and facebook/myspace pages where the information would become content that is continuously updated rather then simple static information.  This new read-write web marks the beginning of the web platforms (seen in things such as google os).The web would be seen then in terms of community rather then corporation or business.   This puts the focus on the power of community to create and validate.  We see this in the move from Britannica onine (web 1.0) to Wikipedia (web 2.0) where collective opinion is valued as much as editorial publication.  This new web community offered a glimpse into a more free form of integration and organization and views toward future integration of new systems.   The dynamic capabilities of this web system is obviously a prime estate for advertising.  

Web 3.0

The read-write web is replaced ultimately with a portable personal web where everything is tailored to each persons specific needs/wants/uses/etc.  The focus on the web as a community becomes a focus on the individual.  Blogs become lifestreams, a total digital collection of all you do and have done starting with a digital certificate of birth.  Instead of shared content, web stuff is thought of as dynamic content that exists on the web and is organized to each person specifically.  The web based platform will ultimately lead to a condition where widgets, apps, etc are the way we navigate.  The simple advertisements become interactive, personalized, pointed, advertainment blurring the lines between advertisement and entertainment.  it all centers around metadata...

The idea of metadata is not new, especially in the computer science field, and even in the stock trading where metadata is understood as information about stock data.  when properly understood and interpreted, stock market metadata, also simply referred to as stock metadata, “can help you picture what is happening with a particular company’s stock.  So if there is a trading trend developing, one of the tools used to spot that trend as it moves along the stock marked is market metadata.”  Example…. If you want to buy shares in a company, you might want to have an idea of what 15-minute period of the trading day do shares of that company statistically trade at their lowest points.  This information (and other stuff such as relationships with other trades and companies) is a stocks metadata.  It its this information that makes up a sort of stock 'identity'.  This metadata is currently sold with trading services such as ameritrade, etrade, and others.  The question is if in the future will there be a market for Metadata.  A place where Metadata might be sold, bought, and traded like stock?  Might this new Metadata Market be a way Times Square can enter the world of web 3.0?

More infor on stock metadata:

http://www.peaceforhaiti.com/tag/metadata