What is the next technology revolution?
The history of the internet can be summed up easily into four different stages, or waves:
- Directory
- Search
- Social
- Mobile
For those that have been around for a while you know this to be true. Yahoo! and a few other sites started out by simply creating a massive directory of sites – this was the first web and it’s what made Yahoo! such a large player in the beginning. Then, the directories became too large to manage and so search was born, the second wave.
Then, people got tired of that and realized that there was a social layer of interaction that was possible. The rise of “Web 2.0″ was born as the third wave. Facebook, Twitter, and an infinite number of social networks suddenly showed up and only a few remain of those originals today.
Finally, we are currently in the wave of mobile – it’s mobile everything as it’s the most progressive and exciting technology crest that we’ve seen build. A “computer” in every pocket and a browser just arms-reach away.
The question, though, for entrepreneurs, is what is next. What will the 5th wave be? Sure, we haven’t even see mobile reach it’s full potential yet but for those that make a living at predicting what the next wave will be before it’s even born we are passionately curious about what’s on the horizon.
I think one possibility is that local might be one of the next candidates. Sure, we already have a few geo-local players but they are terrible. Their products and some of their stock prices show obvious proof of that. I don’t think it’s been done well and it’s not a “player” yet.
Closely aligned with local idea is education and this idea of IRL or elements of being fully present and physical with technology. Education is the hidden gem of the tech world as a trillion dollar industry that few have been able to really tap into. Education may be the 5th wave.
Dang it. I was kind of hoping it would be “meme.”
In all seriousness? I second “local.”
Putting a vote in for education. There’s a tidal wave of disruption building and moving against traditional education. Khan Academy is an excellent example, along with Treehouse and Codecademy.
Education as well… At what point you guys think we will go back and repeat the cycle? Maybe it is too early still… The cycle with a twist…
I’m going to hop on the education bandwagon too. If some tech company could figure out how to tap into the homeschool movement, stream line it, and make it user friendly, I think there would be a huge explosion in what is currently a small market. There are so many components of the education system that can be done better than the traditional model is doing. Thanks for the interesting thought this morning!
I know as we move forward the local and mobile industries are booming. I think the more integration we see with local especially G+ we are moving toward more and more companies realizing the local infused with mobile will give them a killer solution. As to the next wave, I’m not even sure.. Most of my clients at this point don’t even know what local/mobile is. So there are still major enhancements and discoveries to be made in both areas.
Massive transformation/democratization in education underway … pretty amazing
How about voice search? Siri, but more so. It may require advanced AI, but being able to ask natural questions and get natural answers would be a big improvement.
“Google-Fu” is a skill we’ve developed to compensate for the lack of comprehension in computers – phrasing our questions in just the right way, to coax out the answer we need. This can be improved.
I agree that local (Personal Area Networks) is more likely the next big wave. We saw potential for this with Bluetooth, but it didn’t quite take off. We need a more seamless, secure, battery-conscious wireless standard.
I don’t know if or when education will take off, but we need it! Education feels very “patched together” to me, like educational institutions have made clunky attempts to adapt to new technology, but are largely still in the pre-internet era. Education could be so much better, and there’s a fortune to be made there.
John,
I had a gut feeling over three years ago that education would be a huge wave and one reason why I was pushing some of my past online ventures to head in that direction. I think we have only hit the tip of the iceberg.
seriously my friend…!
I am thinking that we will be moving towards a centralised spot that connects all social media together. People are getting tired of having so many sites they have accounts on.
RSS could be the future of this – although we’ll have to abandon networks that insist on remaining closed (like Twitter removing their RSS).
Another possibility is Google’s Password Ring http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet-security/9811715/Google-aims-to-replace-passwords-with-ID-ring.html
I think the next wave will be new human-computer interaction experiences like augmented reality, holography and gesture-based control paradigms.
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However, in the realm of “social,” I still think there is still new value to be created, via the interest graph. Contrary to the social graph, which can be used to make inferences based on your social connections, the interest graph maps tastes, creating a network of people who share interests, but don’t necessarily know each other.
And so the next step in social is a deliberate effort to connect people with people, (rather than people with content) using the interest graph.
I wrote about this here: http://doriandargan.com/post/42271126403/the-interest-graph-is-coming
Regarding gesture-based control paradigms, doesn’t that already exist? On smartphones, tablets, and now Windows 8 computers?
Regarding interest graphs – I definitely agree on that, but I’ll comment on your blog post.
I am going to hop n the education bandwagon too. If some tech company could figure out how to tap into the home school movement, stream line it, and make it user friendly. I think there would be a huge explosion in what is currently a small market. There are so many components of the education system that can be done better than the traditional model is doing.
John you got me thinking about where the web is going and I started to write a comment but I realised that it was more of a full length post half way through so I put it on my blog. I think with the advent of cloud computing and multi-device consumers we will start to see the emergence of the converged web.