[Air-l] A Crystal Ball

[Kurt Luther]

Then again, perhaps not. It's nearly 2015, and I'm still waiting for my 
hoverboard and flying Delorean...

Seriously, though, with all these "Clean Slate Internet" projects on the 
rise, predictions about how the Internet itself will look seem 
pointless. Internet research -- at least, socially-themed research -- 
may take place more often in social science departments and less often 
in computer science departments, in contrast to what is the norm these 
days. As mobile devices become more powerful and commonplace, the 
distinction between the "virtual world" and the "real world" may no 
longer be very useful. I'd also imagine that many more sociologists, 
anthropologists, etc. will discover that stranger and more revealing 
human activities are taking place in the global village than in remote 
primitive ones. If more of these scholars migrate to the field of 
Internet research, we'll all be much better off, I think.

Kurt

-- 
Kurt Luther
Ph.D. Student, College of Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, Georgia, USA



Ellie Wix wrote:
> I was recently thinking about this when I stumbled upon
> http://www.adultswim.com/shows/athf/movie/indexLb.html (has sound) and I
> thought to myself "My children will never understand this".  The upcoming
> generations will be so used to a smooth flowing internet, both in visual
> appearance and usability, that they will look at the web pages we have now
> like the way I look at Technicolor movies and ask "This was revolutionary?"
>
> -Ellie
>
> On 4/18/07, James Whyte <whyte.james at yahoo.com> wrote:
>   
>> I was given a Physics textbook that is 99 years old. In looking at the
>> discussion of the electrical potential of gasses, I realized how much the
>> science of electricity has changed in the interim. It raises the question
>> about the history of the Internet in the post creation era.
>>   Here are the questions.
>>
>>   100 years from now what will scholars be writing about the current
>> literature and studies? What will the state of science be? What will be
>> folklore and what will be the state of formal knowledge? If you comment,
>> please speculate as an informed scholar. (on-list or off-list).
>>
>>   James
>>
>>
>> ---------------------------------
>> Ahhh...imagining that irresistible "new car" smell?
>> Check outnew cars at Yahoo! Autos.
>> _______________________________________________
>> The air-l at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
>> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
>> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
>> http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>>
>> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
>> http://www.aoir.org/
>>
>>     
> _______________________________________________
> The air-l at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>
> Join the Association of Internet Researchers: 
> http://www.aoir.org/
>