digital blogging themes

 

A look through my 2011 blogs might give a reader the impression that I blog about anything that I think is interesting in the digital domain. Certainly if something pops up, out of left field, I may comment about it – if it seems interesting, but usually I know the areas that interest me and have been fairly consistent in keeping to these themes. In general these themes are:

Weaving people into the World Wide Web

• The Web was originally developed to handle documents. It then moved on to also handle data. The next progression, as I see it, is incorporating people into this framework. Social networking has been a large part of this, but is not the whole picture by any means. Currently while there are protocols for managing documents and data, there are not “people” protocols. I am interested in any posts that are moving in this direction.

Developing a digital presence on the Web

• Following on from the possibility of “people protocols” is the idea that people will have a pervasive and enduring presence on the Web. That is, a person will become a “data set” that is searchable, can be manipulated and can (maybe) define its own presence.

Digital legacy

• The material people put onto the web, not withstanding how it is woven into the web, becomes their digital legacy. Questions of how it is placed on the Web, how it is retained and what are the long term implications are, increasingly, coming to the attention of writers and web site developers.

The progress of social networking

• Amongst other things, social networking sites are contributing to what a digital legacy might look like; or at the very least are a major data feed into a legacy framework. It is also interesting to see how people are using social networks in their day to day lives and to get an idea regarding which networks they are using. I think it is important that no one social network system dominates, so I watch with interest the range of social network sites people use – and how people integrate their use of these sites.

The analysis and use of the large data sets that are being collected as people engage in Web based activities

• One of the most interesting and fastest growing domains on the Web; how to store, analyse and use the incredible amount of data that is being generated by the activity of people on the Web. Data arrive on the web passively (just through using it, eg., mouse clicks, link access, time – date and so on) and actively by people posting material on various sites, using email, developing profiles uploading photos – videos and so on). These data may be located in many different places and in many different forms. Bringing them together in response to a query, or other type of request, is a significant challenge for programmers.

Mathematical developments underlying web based activity

• As the availability of data increases, and analysis becomes important, the role of mathematics in the scheme of things becomes more vital. In my view it will be the application of math, to many of the problems related to these themes, that will be the key factor in finding ways to move forward.

Public versus private activity on the Web

• A big, and mostly misunderstood, issue on internet behaviour. It does reflect a possible movement in the world in general to revise ideas of what is meant by being public and being private – and what are the implications for the average person in their day to day life.

Software development and evolution

• Along with my longstanding interest in software development I am also aware of an idea that could be termed software evolution. Prior to the Web, and the proliferation of hardware forms, there only needed to be a few computer languages. Almost all programming that people wanted to do could be managed (often on a mainframe) using these key languages. It also meant that programmers were a very portable commodity and didn’t need to seek employment based on the languages they could code in. Today it is very different. There are dozens of computer programming languages that people can choose to use, and they continue to be developed to meet the needs of the evolving internet and hardware forms. An outcome of this is that programmers are becoming more specialist and “ordinary” programmers, like myself, are finding it harder and harder to keep up with the options available. Because I feel strongly that the average person should be able to program a computer (at least at a basic level) this is a problem – one that I hope the future evolution of programming languages will begin to address.