Web 2.0 Expo: O’Reilly’s Keynote in a Nutshell
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Sometimes called the prophet of web 2.0, author/publisher Tim O’Reilly took the Web 2.0 Expo stage Wednesday to describe the future of the web as he sees it. In a nutshell? Our future is in the humanity behind the technology.
In other words, O’Reilly is pointing at social data being used everywhere, including through the growing use of internet-enabled mobile devices (or “mobile sensors”), to augment and annotate our first lives using our “second lives.”
Choice O’ Reilly Quotes and Endorsements:
- “The web was never meant to be a version number, it was more of what happened to web after the dot-com bust.”
- Google Mobile App for iPhone– you run it, bring it to your ear, say “pizza” and it will tell you the three pizza places closest to your ear
- Opera’s April Fools Joke — You tweak your face to control the browser. The concept actually hits a little too close to home
- BarTor for Android — Scan a bar code by using the phones’ built-in browser
- O’Reilly compared the social networks today of e-mail at its beginning. Having an identifiable namespace helps. Long term, we’ll all learn how to gateway between one identity and another
- Antigenic Cartography — Uses machine learning to figure out which way flu virus will drift in the upcoming year
- “We’re getting beyond the world that is just for fun,” O’Reilly remarked about the intention of many social (and free) websites. “It’s really starting to go to work.”
- Botanicalls.com — As an example of putting the web to work, Botanicalls will tweet or phone you when your plant needs to be watered.
- “Barack Obama used technology to transform politics. What he did was profoundly world changing.”
- “Maybe there’s power in less,” a slightly more somber O’Reilly said, referring to the global economic downturn. “We take for granted that we get more each year for less. It doesn’t work that way. The basis of economy is that more will be spent. Yet, in technology we have this wonderful power of getting more for the same amount.”
- USAspending.gov — A government site that tracks federal programs. This site only cost a couple thousand dollars, thanks to the Sunlight foundation.
- Twitter.com — the expo’s most talked about technology. O’Reilly referred to it as an example of how an incredibly simple application led to all kinds of innovation designed to do all the things that Twitter itself had not done.
- “[The internet is a] Digital commonwealth. It’s something that we create together. We in the Web community know that. It’s something that we have created together. To continue to create and invent and create value for this challenged world of ours.”
O’Reilly’s is an ambitious and well-intentioned vision — one shared with Thursday’s keynote speakers such as Nokia’s Anssi Vanjoki and through Sim City and Spore game creator Will Wright.
Other keynotes took the opportunity to demo some of their own products (or books). The Microsoft discussion with Stephen Elop confirmed the company was working on its an ad-supported online Office, its answer to Google Docs. Elop also hinted that it was working on its own version of Twitter, one that will bridge the communication gap between seasoned employees and those straight out of school.
Finally of Note, Palm’s Michael Abbott’s keynote took his time to shortly describe WebOS, its mobile Operating system designed to run web technologies natively. Download the development kit at Palm’s new developer site.
[Photo by Designbyfront via Flickr]
See Also:
