The Intelligent Web

Web Strategist, Jeremiah Owyang writes:

The Intelligent Web: Software that is able to collect and make sense of all the data in the system and is able to deliver meaningful content back to people in context –often without us saying or gesturing that we need it.

In his recent post, Jeremiah speaks about "friending" others in such social communities like Facebook, Plaxo and others and the notion that these mind numbing aspects of our social relm could be obsolete with the advent of the "Intelligent Web."

"Intelligent websites (and their data) will be able to determine who our friends are from our behaviors, context, and preferences, without us verbally (or physically) having to indicate so. ...Like a baby, we’re teaching the ’system’ our language, how to walk, how to coexist in our real flesh and blood world, the ’system’ is just starting to show intelligence. One primary example of this is the use of hashtags in Twitter. We use the # sign to tag content so it’s easily to organize and find. That one # character isn’t native to our tongue (unless when you recite your grocery list and say “hashtag”) it’s another example of us speaking machine language in order to teach the system."

Today we mindlessly "add colleagues/friends," however, similar to the (#) hashtags concept, Intelligent systems will be able to identify through our actions connect users with like colleagues.

Jeremiah Owyang writes: If you can’t see where this is headed, I’ll tell you: all of what we’re doing from our clicks, queries, wall posts and tweets is teaching the ’system’. In the long run we’re creating a massive global computer, an artificial intelligence, and someday, a thinking being.

Therefore, when the 'system' is more mature, we won’t have to explicitly state who we’re friends with anyone –it’ll have learned and already know.

An interesting post to also read is: What's after the social web.
All this brings me full circle to a post I shared earlier about the next 5,000 days and "The One Machine" by Kevin Kelly.

The next stage in human technological evolution is a single thinking/web/computer that is planetary in dimensions. This planetary computer will be the largest, most complex and most dependable machine we have ever built. It will also be the platform that most business and culture will run on. The web is the initial OS of this new global machine, and all the many gadgets we possess are the windows into its core. Future gizmos will be future gateways into the same One Machine.

Keep your eyes open and your behavior behaving. The one machine is watching you.