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Robin
Good suggests (quite accurately) that Internet 3.0 (or is it 4.0 ;-) is
beginning to take shape.
Three years ago (May 2001) Bear Sterns Equity Research (Chris Kwak & Robert Fagin) published a lengthy report
that introduced "Internet 3.0". There wasn't a mention in that report about the
emergence of Weblogs or the growing demand for content syndication services and
technologies. However, they did forecast the likely outcome of an information
tsunami when decentralized and peer-to-peer publishing capabilities emerged.
"The Edge becomes the Internet and devices do more with what have to date
been dormant native resources. PC's become dominant, and all clients are thick.
The domain name system is no longer the only addressing system utilized by
networks.The browser is no longer the gateway to the Internet." -- Bear
Sterns Equity Research
Hmmm -- the browser is no longer the gateway to the Internet. They probably
weren't thinking of RSS newsreaders, but they were right anyway. Lately I
find myself using my newsreader and MS Office to find stuff. I'm biased of
course because I help build the first (and only) RSS-to-Office search
integration available - MyST
SmartSpace.
RSS feeds, specifically collections of them in a particular domain of
expertise, serve as highly effective pools of knowledge that are easily
searched. In Google, I find myself continually trying to find a needle in
a pile of needles. With Microsoft Office Research Services, (based
on tight sets of RSS flows) I'm able to hunt for a red needle in a
very small bag of multi-colored needles; much better odds.
"In these last few days, I have been particularly excited and encouraged
by the growing number of articles, essays and posts hinting and describing in
similar and complementary ways, the vision of the new Web that is already taking
shape." -- Robin
Good
These changes are now affecting our search behaviors because we have new
resources to search that are both more timely and tightly focused on specific
domains of expertise and interest. The notion of search is transforming to take
advantage of discrete addressability of domain-specific content that (in the
past) was typically persisted in large blobs of stuff. Weblogs and RSS feeds
have open the door to the atomization of content. XML standards and aggregation
tools have made it possible to reassemble the atoms in ways that are more
meaningful thus fundamentally changing search requirements.
Eventually the concept of search will vanish - information will find us. | 
