Current Technological Progress in Information Technology will be Measured Against the Technological Convergence that Created Television

Comparing applications developing on the web to anything but television I believe, misses the mark.

The revolution in mass media under way now can only be compared with the last relevant technology. That's easy to see in the history of the development of technology from a historians point of view - but it is very difficult to see while its happening - in real time. Who's to say what will develop out of these Internet Applications we are playing with now?

All these new applications - with their new portability - though our manipulation of them in the real world - are in the process of creating an "UberApp." When we create it via this Great Wiki represented currently by Twitter, the most progressive application - it will be will be a 1000 times better than TV - but just like TV.

When the internal combustion engine was refined to run a buggy, people didn't compare it to a train, they compared it to the last relevant technology, the horse and buggy. That's easy to see now, a hundred years later, back in the day who knows what the 'losers' in the race tried to do with the technology as it was refining; we have no idea because their visions never saw the light of day. Meaningful applications quickly became the 'it' technology, that those same 'losers' may then have ceased upon and perhaps became 'winners' with later.

Janus Friis, the inventor of Skype (free Phone) and Kazaa (free Music), said in a recent interview at GigaOM online magazine: "Television is the most powerful mass medium...". That's a brilliant way to look at it.

Is the culmination of this great connectivity going to be powerful? Yes, I think so - absolutely.

I love the way Janus Friis thinks about problems; he continues,

..and we are trying to do is marry the best of television with the best of internet. What people love about the television is the story telling. What people don’t like is television that is locked in linear time. We want to try and preserve the best bits of television, and discard bits people don’t care for.

"locked in linear time"

He's discussing the project he and his partner in "crime" Niklas Zennstrom are currently working on, namely the internet television set also known as the Venice Project which is being developed to function with the open source Mozilla search engine.

Tip of the Hat to Tim O'Reilly, or was it Michael Geist?

What Tweetie bird got me here? This cat doesn't know, but i like it.



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