A few words on the past, present, and future of the machine.

Now that we have finished Battelle’s The Search, I am excited to move onto something other than Google, but as I found out, it all ties together. In the beginning of attempting to read these two articles, they both seemed as if they were full of technical information that I would not be able to understand completely. However after carefully reading most of it, I found that I was able to come to somewhat of an understanding about their contents.

First, Kevin Kelly’s article about the past, present, and future of the Internet was the more readable one. He ties in how in the beginning, most people did not see a future in the new technology of the Internet. He goes onto explain that the immense changes that have occurred over the past 10 years (now 13), show how quickly technologies, as well as acceptance of those technologies can change. I found his statement about how many pages exist on the Internet (more than 600 billion) to be incredible. I have never seen an estimation of the number out there before. Also, I find his prediction of the future of the Internet to be quite intriguing. His comparison of the Internet as a “planet-sized computer” to the human brain is great. Just like O’Reilly, he proposes that in the future, desktop operating systems will be a thing of the past as everything is based off of the Internet. Finally, I really enjoyed his idea that we are alive at a moment in time that where humanity, as well as the way we communicate, is changing incredibly. I have had conversations with friends where I brought up this exact point that we are living in a time when the change is so profound that it is unlike anything in recent history. We are truly making a large machine in which all of the information in our society, as well as others around the world, will be linked to each other so that everything is available to everyone.

Next, Tim O’Reilly’s article about the open source movement and how it relates to the development of the Internet and software was a little tougher to comprehend. Luckily, the little knowledge that I do have on the topic helped me to pick out key parts. First, I am composing this in OpenOffice, so I understood what open source software was. When I bought my computer, it did not come with Microsoft Office, and I didn’t feel like buying it, so I found OpenOffice. I can say that I am incredibly pleased with this alternative. The only problem I ever have is making sure that I save the file as a “.doc” file if I am sending it to professors or others. He highlights three trends that open source is an expression of: (1) The commoditization of software, (2) network-enable collaboration, and (3) software customizability. Ultimately, I think that what he is getting at is that most people fail to realize the importance of open source in the development in the Internet, and also that in the future, there will no longer be such a thing as a Windows operating system and that the likelihood of a universal Internet operating system is becoming much more likely.