The Web 2.0 Community

by Maarten Visser

The Vision

All information in the world like facts, knowledge, concepts, ideas and stories should be available to everybody. Only the information that can bring harm to others, like certain government (medial records) and organisational information should be locked away. All other information should be shared so that it can be used to push innovation.

When all information is stored in a structured way based on international standards, it can then be automatically organised in unlimited ways, again using open standards. When this is done correctly, we can realize an open platform, on which applications and tools can be built to support all possible ways we want to view and respond to this information. There should be all kinds of (visual) interfaces, and these interfaces should automatically adapt based on current knowledge (a different interface for children), disabilities (a different interface for blind people), type of work, culture, environment, device, or current goals.

If all information becomes available to everybody, we will need new systems for patents, payment in research projects and international laws on copyright. These systems could also result in new ways to look at how local or worldwide decisions are made.

The realisation

In the last decade we have learned that a successful internet applications need to be open, have usable results, and most importantly, it needs has to have an easy to use GUI (Graphical User Interface).

We need Graphical User interfaces to do the following:

• Structure ideas, discussions, goals, projects, stories, questions and answers in a logically and easily comprehensible manner;
• Get control over incoming information streams (news, ideas and thoughts from other people and organisations) that are related to your daily activities. This could be done by building multiple connections and intuitive tools that realise personal and organisational information filters;
• Have easy to use and powerful ways to contribute and interact in other information streams. Adding text, voice or video should be just as easy as responding to a person in a real world situation.

Benefits of the new architecture

A worldwide open and standardised community will have the following benefits:

• No login (just one profile for everything you do)
• No boundaries to access information
• No boundaries to realize seamless collaboration
• No expensive parallel development projects
• Unlimited ways to structure information
• Unlimited automatically connected sources
• Unlimited Interfaces to consume and respond to information
• Unlimited collaboration on research, projects and knowledge.

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