Archive for the ‘Best Articles’ Category

The Birth of the Scheduled Web

May 6th, 2010

If 2010 was the year of the Real-Time Web, then 2011 is going to be the year that it evolves into the Scheduled Web.
The Real-Time Web happens in the now: it is spontaneous, overwhelming, and disorganized. Things just happen unpredictably and nobody really knows what to expect or what will happen when.
The Real-Time Web is [...]

Evri Ties the Knot with Twine — Twine CEO Comments and Analysis

March 11th, 2010

Today I am pleased to announce that my company, Radar Networks, and its flagship product, Twine, have been acquired by Evri. TechCrunch broke the story here.
This acquisition consolidates the two leading providers of semantic discovery and search. It is also the culmination of my long and challenging venture to pioneer the adoption of the consumer [...]

A New Layer of the Brain is Evolving: The Metacortex

February 24th, 2010

The human brain is like an archaeological record. Different layers and functional areas have evolved outwards over time. And now a new layer is evolving. I propose we call this new layer of the brain “the metacortex.” (Note: Metacortex also happens to be the company that Neo worked for in the movie, The Matrix)
The metacortex [...]

How HiSiri Works – Interview with Tom Gruber, CTO of SIRI

January 26th, 2010

Sneak Preview of Siri – The Virtual Assistant that will Make Everyone Love the iPhone, Part 2: The Technical Stuff
In Part-One of this article on TechCrunch, I covered the emerging paradigm of Virtual Assistants and explored a first look at a new product in this category called Siri. In this article, [...]

Will the Web Become Conscious?

January 19th, 2010

“All reality is virtual” — Terrence McKenna

This is Part II of my article “The Global Brain is About to Wake Up” — about the  realtime Web and how it relates to the emerging Global Brain.
Here I focus mainly on thorny philosophical and scientific speculations about the nature of consciousness, the role it plays in the [...]

The Global Brain is About to Wake Up

January 18th, 2010

The emerging realtime Web is not only going to speed up the Web and our lives, it is going to bring about a kind of awakening of our collective Global Brain. It’s going to change how many things happen on online, but it’s also going to change how we see and understand what the Web [...]

Eliminating the Need for Search – Help Engines

January 16th, 2010

We are so focused on how to improve present-day search engines. But that is a kind of mental myopia. In fact, a more interesting and fruitful question is why do people search at all? What are they trying to accomplish? And is there a better way to help them accomplish that than search?
Instead of finding [...]

The Road to Semantic Search — The Twine.com Story

December 21st, 2009

This is the story of Twine.com — our early research (with never before seen screenshots of our early semantic desktop work), and our evolution from Twine 1.0 towards Twine 2.0 (“T2″) which is focused on semantic search.
A Yarn About Twine — ISWC 2009 Keynote — Nova Spivack
View more presentations from Twine.com.

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The Evolution of the Web: Past, Present, Future

December 21st, 2009

This is a talk I have given many times, on the past, present and future evolution of the Web, and particularly the Semantic Web.

Web Evolution Nova Spivack Twine
View more presentations from Twine.com.

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The Web Wide World — The Web Spreads Into the Physical World

November 4th, 2009

I have noticed an interesting and important trend of late. The Web is starting to spread outside of what we think of as “the Web” and into “the World.” This trend is exemplified by many data points. For example:

The Web on mobile devices like the iPhone. Finally it’s really usable [...]

What's After the Real Time Web?

October 27th, 2009

In typical Web-industry style we’re all focused minutely on the leading trend-of-the-year, the real-time Web. But in this obsession we have become a bit myopic. The real-time Web, or what some of us call “The Stream,” is not an end in itself, it’s a means to an end. So what will it enable, where is [...]

The Next Generation of Web Search — Search 3.0

May 22nd, 2009

The next generation of Web search is coming sooner than expected. And with it we will see several shifts in the way people search, and the way major search engines provide search functionality to consumers.
Web 1.0, the first decade of the Web (1989 – 1999), was characterized by a distinctly desktop-like search paradigm. The overriding [...]

Nowism — A Theme for the New Era?

May 22nd, 2009

DRAFT 1 — A Work in Progress
Introduction
Here’s an idea I’ve been thinking about: it’s a concept for a new philosophy, or perhaps just a name for a grassroots philosophy that seems to be emerging on its own. It’s called “Nowism.” The view that now is what’s most important, because now is where one’s life actually [...]

Welcome to the Stream – Next Phase of the Web

May 8th, 2009

May 8, 2009
Welcome to The Stream
The Internet began evolving many decades before the Web emerged. And while today many people think of the Internet and the Web as one and the same, in fact they are different. The Web lives on top of the Internet’s infrastructure much like software and documents live on top of [...]

Can We Design Better Communities?

April 18th, 2009

(DRAFT 2. A Work-In-Progress)
The Problem: Our Communities are Failing
I’ve been thinking about community lately. There is a great need for a new and better model for communities in the world today.
Our present communites are not working and most are breaking down or stagnating. Cities are experiencing urbanization and a host of ensuing  social and economic [...]

Metascience: The Convergence of Science and Religion

April 15th, 2009

(DRAFT 7. Work-In-Progress)
What is the universe and where does it come from?
There are two major schools of thought on this question:

Science: One is modern-day science, which takes the position that universe is strictly a physical phenomenon and that everything about can be explained by repeatable physical measurements, testable scientific theories, and the rules of math [...]

Wolfram Alpha is Coming — And It Could be as Important as Google

March 7th, 2009

Notes:
- This article last updated on March 11, 2009.
- For follow-up, connect with me about this on Twitter here.
- See also: for more details, be sure to read the new review by Doug Lenat, creator of Cyc. He just saw the Wolfram Alpha demo and has added many useful insights.
——————————————————————–
Introducing Wolfram Alpha
Stephen Wolfram is [...]

Video: My Talk on the Evolution of the Global Brain at the Singularity Summit

February 13th, 2009

If you are interested in collective intelligence, consciousness, the global brain and the evolution of artificial intelligence and superhuman intelligence, you may want to see my talk at the 2008 Singularity Summit. The videos from the Summit have just come online.
(Many thanks to Hrafn Thorisson who worked with me as my research assistant for [...]

How to Build the Global Mind

October 27th, 2008

Kevin Kelly recently wrote another fascinating article about evidence of a global superorganism. It’s another useful contribution to the ongoing evolution of this meme.
I tend to agree that we are at what Kevin calls, Stage III. However, an important distinction in my own thinking is that the superorganism is not comprised just of machines, but [...]

Watch My best Talk: The Global Brain is Coming

October 2nd, 2008

I’ve posted a link to a video of my best talk — given at the GRID ‘08 Conference in Stockholm this summer. It’s about the growth of collective intelligence and the Semantic Web, and the future and role the media. Read more and get the video here. Enjoy!
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New Video: Leading Minds from Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft talk about their Visions for Future of The Web

September 12th, 2008

Video from my panel at DEMO Fall ‘08 on the Future of the Web is now available.
I moderated the panel, and our panelists were:
Howard Bloom, Author, The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century
Peter Norvig, Director of Research, Google Inc.
Jon Udell, Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation
Prabhakar Raghavan, PhD, Head of Research and [...]

The Future of the Desktop

July 26th, 2008

This is an older version of this article. The most recent version is located here:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/future_of_the_desktop.php
—————
I have spent the last year really thinking about the future of the Web. But lately I have been thinking more about the future of the desktop. In particular, here are some questions I am thinking about and some answers I’ve [...]

Video of my Presentation at The Next Web 2008 Conference

June 3rd, 2008

Here is the full video of my talk on the Semantic Web at The Next Web 2008 Conference. Thanks to Boris and the NextWeb gang!
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Great Collective Intelligence Book; Includes a Chapter I Wrote

April 23rd, 2008

I highly recommend this new book on Collective Intelligence. It features chapters by a Who’s Who of thinkers on Collective Intelligence, including a chapter by me about “Harnessing the Collective Intelligence of the World Wide Web.”
Here is the full-text of my chapter, minus illustrations (the rest of the book is great and I suggest you [...]

Artificial Stupidity: The Next Big Thing

January 24th, 2008

There has been a lot of hype about artificial intelligence over the years. And recently it seems there has been a resurgence in interest in this topic in the media. But artificial intelligence scares me. And frankly, I don’t need it. My human intelligence is quite good, thank you very much. And as far as [...]

Web 3.0 — The Best Official Definition Imaginable

October 4th, 2007

Jason just blogged his take on an official definition of "Web 3.0" — in his case he defines it as better content, built using Web 2.0 technologies. There have been numerous responses already, but since I am one of the primary co-authors of the Wikipedia page on the term Web 3.0, I thought I should [...]

The Rise of the Social Operating System

July 19th, 2007

In recent months we have witnessed a number of social networking sites begin to open up their platforms to outside developers. While this trend has been exhibited most prominently by Facebook, it is being embraced by all the leading social networking services, such as Plaxo, LinkedIn, Myspace and others. Along separate dimensions we also see [...]

Enriching the Connections of the Web — Making the Web Smarter

July 3rd, 2007

Web 3.0 — aka The Semantic Web — is about enriching the connections of the Web. By enriching the connections within the Web, the entire Web may become smarter.
I  believe that collective intelligence primarily comes from connections — this is certainly the case in the brain where the number of connections between neurons far outnumbers [...]

Web 3.0 — Next-Step for Web?

July 3rd, 2007

The Business 2.0 Article on Radar Networks and the Semantic Web just came online. It’s a huge article. In many ways it’s one of the best popular articles written about the Semantic Web in the mainstream press. It also goes into a lot of detail about what Radar Networks is working on.
One point of clarification, [...]

Business 2.0 and BusinessWeek Articles About Radar Networks

June 29th, 2007

It’s been an interesting month for news about Radar Networks. Two significant articles came out recently:
Business 2.0 Magazine published a feature article about Radar Networks in their July 2007 issue. This article is perhaps the most comprehensive article to-date about what we are working on at Radar Networks, it’s also one of the better articulations [...]