What makes the evolution of the web more interesting is that in whatever small ways, we all are drivers of the changes that are happening. Seth Godin wrote a thought provoking post sometime back on the evolution of a medium, in which he points out the end result of banality.

On Twitter recently, Surekha, Karthik and I had a good discussion on attribution and payment models, triggered by Karthik’s post.  again got me thinking on digital collectivism. I’ve always wondered about the conflicts of digital collectivism and mediocrity, and recently read a good post in the WSJ, that not only made a case of the former working against innovation, but also the need for a better system for intellectual property rights.

Digital collectivism, content creation, Intellectual Property Rights are all issues that would have to be simultaneously grappled with. Right now, separate industries are battling it out in their own turf, what would happen when individuals like you and me are faced with these? Systems are evolving faster than standards can. With more people, including celebrities getting on board Twitter, and the web in general, there is going to be more content abundance and the need for trust based networks. I, for one, believe that proper standards of attribution would have to be a part of the trust based economy.

Meanwhile, because of the subjective/personal nature of the social web and the relative ease in creating content/products/services, it is safe to expect that niche models and economies would happen. We would perhaps move beyond what we call social media now, as it becomes a standard, because as Rex Hammock correctly states, the web is bigger than social media.

But then I had a strange notion. As habits change, new consumption patterns emerge and technology evolves to such an extent that geographical constraints become even more irrelevant, will we see a different kind/system of human aggregation? Will we see virtual gated communities with different protocols, that will tie back into reality and help build sustainable economies different from what we can fathom now? Going back to that WSJ article I linked to earlier, has the net already accumulated baggage, in terms of the way things work? What if the web has already evolved to such an extent that these new systems would find operating within it, a constraint?

Would we then see the emergence of a new medium? Think about it, the timeframe between emergence of new media  are getting crunched. And there were days when nobody thought there would be something that would make newspapers almost redundant. Does that mean the net will? Perhaps not, but it just won’t be the super hero it is now.

until next time, internext

Good Read in context:  “In Networks we trust, but privacy is another matter“