First that the World Wide Web is likely to grow ten times in the next ten years. The number 10 is used here to signify, symbolically, a very considerable multiplicative increase. The numbers one hundred, one thousand, ten thousand, one million, or one billion, could have served equally well.
Second that in order for this to occur, the Web will need to change. I refer here to qualitative change. It needs to change quantitatively, too, but I already said that.
In order for this qualitative change to come about it will be necessary for us to define what the Web is for, and the answer to this question will be found in the opposite direction from that in which everyone is looking. Everyone thinks the Web is for doing things which have never been done before, which is surely true, but in fact it is also for doing the same things we have always done.
Now it might possibly seem that what I am referring to is manual labor. What an interesting thought! If there is something we have always done that everyone thinks has only so much to do with the Web, it might be that. But, paradoxically, this very prosaic possibility is too esoteric to discuss here, in this particular spot.
In fact, what I was thinking about was that whole other realm of endeavor, everything scholastic, literary, artistic, and clerical.
You will ask, then, what is different about that? However, I will answer the question. Of course we engage in all these pastimes on the Web, but on today's Web these are Web activities, which is not as things have always been.
To give an example, the way it has always been is, if we were so inclined, we would keep a diary, in which we would record in considerable detail the passage of days. People of a certain sort might embellish their diaries with all sorts of illustrations, and these, assuredly, would be very free and fanciful in nature. Moreover they might achieve a considerable density: reading such a diary we might see quite a large number of images at once on one page, all wonderfully detailed and expressive.
Well, there definitely is a resemblance between that and today's Web, but it's possible to wonder if the Web could be more similar to that.
This next point might seem far too literal, but then wouldn't that perhaps support my premise? When we are done writing or reading in our diaries, we close them up, the diaries, and put them someplace, such as on a shelf, or on a table, or in our pockets. This is a helpful practice when we want to look in or write in our diaries again. It makes them easy to find. Could the Web more resemble the way we've always done things in ways like this?
The answer, of course, is that it could, but it would not be wise to suggest that this kind of device is the entire answer to the question of what the Web is for. Just as it is, I think, dangerous, to too lightly dismiss the details of the way things have always been done - or of the ways things are done -, it would be unreasonable to assert that those details are the Web's purpose. It would even be a bit pretentious. The means to an end are very important, but so is the end itself.
A diarist seeks to own a fine diary, and a very good pen to write in it with. A scholar seeks to own a fine library, that is, a very fine room for reading and writing in, and a large collection of fine books on lovely shelves. A craftsman hopes to inhabit a beautiful and spacious studio, equipped with the tools and facilities required for manufacturing, and plenty of space to display his work.
Let us further consider our example of the diary. A variation would be writing on cards, which can be arranged on tables, or, for most effortless study, on walls. But here we encounter a difference between the way things have always been and the way they currently are. I think it does clarify things to think that the product of our pens, today, namely, photographs, could be inserted into an environment of the kind just described - in virtual reality ... but what about their voluminousness? And that's even if it is technically feasible. Furthermore, if we are talking about the way things have always been, we must also talk about the way things are. The way things are is that our photographs are instantaneously and automatically inserted into what really is a kind of wall. We don't need to do anything, not one thing, to enjoy this feature of the Web (and our devices are part of the Web), but the system is in certain ways limited, and this limited quality of it makes it seem that to use our cameras to actually maintain a detailed record of everything would overwhelm it.
Here, then, is a place where the Web today differs from the way things have always been in a way that is by no means superficial, that is, it is not just a matter of appearances, but is a question of what we ought to do with the technology.
Web development provides us with the tools we need to make use of the Web, and then those tools tell us what we can and cannot do with them. If the tool tells us we can do something, we do it, and if it tells us we can't, or even just doesn't tell us we can, it's very likely we won't. But these permissions and limits do not originate - except in a kind of psychological sense - in the capabilities of, in particular, hardware, or in, more broadly, software, rather they are a product of developer perception as to what we ought to and ought not to do. Well, developers may not be saying, in so many words, that we ought not to use the Web to keep extremely detailed diaries of our days, but I have a feeling they are wary of the notion, and, besides, they are not explicitly saying that we ought, as a rule, to do that. This proposes itself: to tell our users to do that ... using software.
