Kevin Kelly ponders about the web’s next 5,000 days
At an EG (Entertainment Gathering) conference, Kevin Kelly shares a fun statistic: The World Wide Web, as we know it, is only 5,000 days old. Now, Kelly asks, how can we predict what’s coming in the next 5,000 days?
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“The Internet is only 5,000 days old…”
Did you know that there are 2 million emails sent per second? How about the fact that there are 100 billion clicks on the internet per day? Today, people are all, for the most part, always connected to the web, whether through a computer or a cell phone. However, for the most part very few of us spend much time thinking about the never-ending supply of information and opportunity that the web actually represents.
Kevin Kelly, the executive editor at WIRED magazine, points out that most people have accepted the Internet into their lives without any doubt or hesitation. The web is an example of how people come to accept the seemingly impossible. Continuing with this idea, he believes that what is even more interesting is what is to come in the next 5,000 days. If we have been able to come this far in such little time, what marvels will evolve in the years to come? Kelly points out that if anything, the web has taught us that we need to get better in believing the impossible. Fifteen years ago, no one would have believed what we are now able to accomplish with the click of a button. In merely 5,000 days, we have constructed a single global machine through the web. All of the devices that we use (computers, cellular phones, etc.), are simply access points through which we enter into this enormous global net.
This theory, in which the Internet is seen as a super computer and a super brain, is becoming more common: Kelly looks beyond this theory in anticipation for the future. The presence of this super brain is evident everywhere; we are constantly connected. And it can only be assumed that the web will continue to evolve and improve. In the future, the Internet will not be solely an enormous database. Instead, Kelly sees a symbiotic relationship forming between man and the web. All of us will become an extension of this mega brain.
What could be the implications of such a phenomenon?
The next 5,000 days of the Internet will not simply be better, but different. For example, perhaps the Internet will no longer passively supply information, but also give it a value or significance. I would like to propose an alternative ending to Kelly’s argument: although in the future machines will be able to solve all of our problems, the critical capacity still comes from man. The Internet can continue to exist for the next 5,000 days, but without man, it stands for nothing.
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Tags: 5000 days, Kevin Kelly, web
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