My father, Mayer Spivack, passed away on February 12, 2011, in the Kaplan Family House, a beautiful hospice outside of Boston. He passed away, at the young age of 74, after a difficult year and a half battle with colon cancer.… Read More “My Father and Me. A Memoir. For Mayer Spivack (1936 – 2011)”
Tonight I am pleased to announce that my next Big Idea has launched. It’s called Live Matrix and I invite you to come check it out.
Live Matrix is the schedule of the Web — We help you to find out “What’s When on the Web” — the hottest live online events happening on the Web: concerts, interviews, live chat sessions, game tournaments, sales, popular Webshows, tech conferences, live streaming sports coverage, and much more.… Read More “The Schedule of the Web: Live Matrix – Launched Tonight”
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.… Read More “The Birth of the Scheduled Web”
Today I am announcing that my company, Radar Networks, and its flagship product, Twine, have been acquired by Evri. TechCrunch broke the story here.
This acquisition consolidates two leading providers of semantic discovery and search. It is also the culmination of a long and challenging venture to pioneer the adoption of the consumer Semantic Web.… Read More “Evri Ties the Knot with Twine — Twine CEO Comments and Analysis”
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 is the Web — our growing global network of information, people, sensors, and computing devices.… Read More “A New Layer of the Brain is Evolving: The Metacortex”
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.… Read More “How Siri Works – Interview with Tom Gruber, CTO of SIRI”
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 is doing.… Read More “The Global Brain is About to Wake Up”
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?… Read More “Eliminating the Need for Search – Help Engines”
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.
… Read More “The Road to Semantic Search — The Twine.com Story”This is a talk I have given many times, on the past, present and future evolution of the Web, and particularly the Semantic Web.
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 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.… Read More “The Next Generation of Web Search — Search 3.0”
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.”… Read More “Nowism — A Theme for the New Era?”
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 an operating system on a computer.… Read More “Welcome to the Stream – Next Phase of the Web”
(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.… Read More “Can We Design Better Communities?”
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.… Read More “Wolfram Alpha is Coming — And It Could be as Important as Google”
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 it is also comprised of people.… Read More “How to Build the Global Mind”
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.… Read More “Watch My best Talk: The Global Brain is Coming”
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:
… Read More “New Video: Leading Minds from Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft talk about their Visions for Future of The Web”Howard Bloom, Author, The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century
Peter Norvig, Director of Research, Google Inc.
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
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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.… Read More “The Future of the Desktop”
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 buy it to have on your shelf.… Read More “Great Collective Intelligence Book; Includes a Chapter I Wrote”
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.… Read More “Artificial Stupidity: The Next Big Thing”
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 throw my hat in the ring here.… Read More “Web 3.0 — The Best Official Definition Imaginable”
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.… Read More “The Rise of the Social Operating System”