Communications - February 2009

table of numbers and as a histogram). Similarly, a multimodal view of a page, supporting both visual and spoken interaction, is also just one more type of view-to-view mashup. Bringing all this together, we can pose the question: What is the size of this Web to come? In theory, we can combine arbitrary subsets of W using the techniques I’ve outlined here. Each combination can in turn be deployed on the Web by making it URL-addressable and expressed mathematically as:

()()() ()

|W||W||W| |W|

+ + +…+ = 2^|^W^|012 |W|

user-oriented Web:
a total Perspective

This number 2^|^W^|is extremely large and growing quickly as we build on the success of the Web; here, I denote this set 2. Fans of Douglas Adams’s

W

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy¹ probably feel like they are now well entrapped within the total perspective vortex. But just as in the case of Za-phod Beeblebrox, the solution is not to focus on the totality of the Web but instead on the individual; 2 exists for

W

the user. As we move to a highly personalized social Web, each element of 2 exists as it is perceived and used by

W a given user.

A significant portion of our social interaction increasingly happens via the Web. Note that a large portion of the impetus for the move from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 and later to the predicted 2 is due to user needs; aggregations,

W

projections, and mashups are all a direct consequence of the user’s need to consume information in a form that is most suited to a given task. Though the resulting set 2 might be immense,

W

most of these elements are relevant only when used by at least one user. Users do not use Web artifacts in a vacuum, but in a given environment or evaluation context provided by a given Web container.

Web content when combined is far more useful than its individual components. Likewise, Web applications used by collaborating users create a far richer experience than would be possible if they were used by users in isolation. Users typically converge on the use of such artifacts via popular Web containers, making the various APIs available by a given container a

key distinguishing factor with respect to the types of interactions enabled within the environment. For example, OpenSocial from Google (code. google.com/apis/opensocial/), which describes itself as “many sites, one API,” defines a set of APIs that can be implemented within a Web container. These APIs then expose a common set of services to gadgets being hosted within the container. Likewise, the Facebook platform provides an API for developing gadgets to be hosted in the Facebook container, ²⁰which can provide access to a user’s contact list, enabling the various gadgets within it to provide an integrated end-user experience.

Conclusion

The Web has evolved from global hypertext system to distributed platform for end-user interaction. Users access it from a variety of devices and rely on late binding of the user interface to produce a user experience that is best suited to a given usage context. With data moving from individual devices to the Web cloud, users today have ubiquitous access to their data. The separation of the user interface from the data being presented enables them to determine how they interact with the data. With data and interaction both becoming URL-addressable, the Web is now evolving toward enabling users to come together to collaborate in ad-hoc groups that can be created and dismantled with minimal overhead. Thus, a movement that started with the creation of three simple building blocks—URL, HTTP, HTML—has evolved into the one platform that binds them all.

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