Dear Friends,
The End of the Web, Search,
and Computer as We Know It
- BY DAVID
GELERNTER
- 02.01.13
- 6:30 AM
Illustration: Ross
Patton/Wired
People ask what the next web
will be like, but there won’t be a next web.
The space-based web we
currently have will gradually be replaced by a time-based worldstream. It’s
already happening, and it all began with the lifestream, a phenomenon that
I (with Eric Freeman) predicted in the 1990s and shared in the
pages of Wired almost exactly 16 years ago.~
This lifestream — a
heterogeneous, content-searchable, real-time messaging stream — arrived in the
form of blog posts and RSS feeds, Twitter and other chatstreams, and Facebook
walls and timelines. Its structure represented a shift beyond the “flatland known
as the desktop” (where our interfaces ignored the temporal dimension) towards
streams, which flow and can therefore serve as a concrete representation of
time.
It’s a bit like moving from
a desktop to a magic diary: Picture a diary whose pages turn automatically,
tracking your life moment to moment … Until you touch it, and then, the
page-turning stops. The diary becomes a sort of reference book: a complete and
searchable guide to your life. Put it down, and the pages start turning
again.
Today, this diary-like
structure is supplanting the spatial one as the dominant paradigm of the
cybersphere: All the information on the internet will soon be a time-based
structure. In the world of bits, space-based structures are static.
Time-based structures are dynamic, always flowing — like time itself.
The web will be history.
Metaphors Have a Profound
Effect on Computing
David Gelernter
David Gelernter is a professor of
computer science at Yale University and chief scientist at Lifestreams.com.
He foresaw the World Wide Web and has been described as “brilliant and
visionary.” Gelernter’s books include Mirror Worlds, Machine
Beauty, and the forthcoming Other Side of the Mind. A former
member of the National Endowment for the Arts governing board, Gelernter is
also a painter; his works are currently on show at Yeshiva University
Gallery in Manhattan.
Until now, the web has been
space-based, like a magazine stand; we use spatial terms such as “second from
the top on the far left” to identify a particular magazine. A diary, on the
other hand, is time-based: One dimension of space has been borrowed to
represent time, so we use temporal terms like “Thursday’s entry” or “everything
from last spring” to identify entries.
Time as a metaphor may seem
obvious now. Especially because it’s natural for us to see our lives as
stories, organized by time.
Yet it took us more than 20
years in computing to get here. The field has finally moved from conserving
resources ingeniously to squandering them creatively. In this new environment,
we can focus on the best way — instead of the cheapest, most conservative way —
for the internet to work.
And today, the most
important function of the internet is to deliver the latest information,
to tell us what’s happening right now. That’s why so many
time-based structures have emerged in the cybersphere: to satisfy the need for
the newest data. Whether tweet or timeline, all are time-ordered streams
designed to tell you what’s new.
Of course, we can still
browse or search into the past: Time moves forwards and backwards
in the cybersphere. Any information object can be added at “now,” and
flows steadily backwards — like a twig dropped in a brook — into the past. You
can drop files, messages, and conventional websites (those will appear as
static, single elements) into the stream, which acts as a content-searchable
cloud file system.
But what happens if we merge
all those blogs, feeds, chatstreams, and so forth? By adding together every
timestream on the net — including the private lifestreams that are just
beginning to emerge — into a single flood of data, we get the worldstream:
a way to picture the cybersphere as a whole.
No one can see the whole
worldstream, because much of the information flowing through it is private. But
everyone can see part of it.
Imagine an old-fashioned
well with a bucket on a rope, with the bucket plunging deeper and deeper into
the well. This well of time is infinitely deep, so the bucket will plunge
forever — and the rope is always as long as it needs to be, so there will
always be more rope to unwind. (The infinite scrolling we now experience on
many timestreamed websites is merely the rope unwinding.) The bucket represents
the head or start of the worldstream, the oldest data object. The rope-axle
represents now, and the rope (plunging deeper and deeper into the
past) is the stream itself.
Instead of today’s static
web, information will flow constantly and steadily through the worldstream into
the past. So what does it all mean?
Today, the most important function
of the internet is to tell us what’s happening right now.
Streams Completely Change
the Search Game
Today’s operating systems
and browsers — and search models — become obsolete, because people no longer
want to be connected to computers or “sites” (they probably never did).
What people really want is
to tune in to information. Since many millions of separate
lifestreams will exist in the cybersphere soon, our basic software will be the stream-browser:
like today’s browsers, but designed to add, subtract, and navigate streams.
Searching content in a time
stream is a matter of stream algebra, which is easier than the algebra of
space-based structures like today’s web. Add two timestreams and get a third
(simply merge the AP news feed and my friend Freeman’s blog streams into
time-order); and content search is a matter of stream subtraction (simply
subtract all entries that don’t mention “cranberries” to yield all the entries
that do). The simple, practical features of stream algebra have one huge
benefit: giving us made-to-order information.
Every news source is a
lifestream. Stream-browsers will help us tune in to the
information we want by implementing a type of custom-coffee blender: We’re
offered thousands of different stream “flavors,” we choose the flavors we want,
and the blender mixes our streams to order.
Every site’s content is
liberated from the confines of space. It becomes part of a
universal timestream. Instead of relying on Amazon the site to notify me if
there’s a new Cynthia Ozick book or new books on the city of Florence, I can
blend together several booksellers’ lifestreams and then apply my search since
stream algebra allows any streams to be added (new and used books) and content
(Florence, Ozick) to be subtracted.
E-commerce changes
drastically. We shouldn’t have to work to find what’s new, yet the way the web
is currently architected it’s no different logically than having to visit a
thousand separate physical shops. The time-based worldstream lets us sit back
instead and watch a single, customized fashion show across sites.
People no longer want to be
connected to computers or ‘sites’ (they probably never did).
Worldstreams thus let us
blend and tune our information any way we like: My preferred Yale football
news, book updates, and shopping recommendations are interspersed with all my
email, other messages, posts, documents, calendar notes, and so
forth. Think these features already exist in an app somewhere? They don’t.
They can’t, not until the millions of different streams each telling their own
stories share the same interface for the stream browser to draw on.
Does this sort of precise
control limit the serendipitous nature of the web? In a way, yes. But it’s
about time: “Bring me what I want” is almost always more useful than “Let me
rummage around and see what I can find.” No matter how fast it seems, most
search is a waste of time. In a way, we are using time (i.e., the time-based
structure) to gain time.
Instead of doing an endless
series of separate searches, we tune the knobs on our stream-browser to
continuously feed us just the information we need.
This future doesn’t just
kill the operating system, browser, and search as we know it — it changes the
meaning of “computer” as we know it, too. Whether large or small (e.g., a
smartphone), a computer’s main function in the near future will be tuning in to
— as a car radio tunes in a broadcast station — the constantly flowing global
cyberflow. We won’t care much about the computer devices themselves since
we’ll be more focused on the world of information … and our lives as attached
to it.
Finally, the web — soon to
become the cybersphere — will no longer resemble a chaotic cobweb. It’s already
started to happen. Instead, billions of users will spin their own tales,
which will merge seamlessly into an ongoing, endless narrative: the earth
telling its own story.
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