You already know my obsession with questions. (No? click here) So when I was asked a question that I had no immediate answer for, that I had to really sit down and ruminate on, I got excited.
A phenomenal freelancing reporter and great friend of mine, David Douglas, had asked me what I thought was next for Internet. Well, here is my response.
What’s Next For Internet
Better question is what new way can we connect more? People have yet to completely open up.
Since the digital revolution began in the early 90’s, a stigma has grown around face-to-face interaction. Even though we feel more and more connected online, people still have a difficult time connecting in person. Despite this setback, our minds remain open, we’ve become natural learners, and we continue to discover the extent of the simultaneously happening information revolution.
What’s next for the internet is based on our next need, desire, and the demand which I can tell you in a moment. First let’s look at how we started and where we are now.
– We began with individuals creating specific content for small groups.
– Then individuals began creating general content for a general audience.
– Then groups began creating specific content for other similar groups.
– Then we entered the age we are in now – the age of mass: mass groups creating mass content to other mass groups.
With recent years, the internet – side by side with the mass – has developed individuals who are creating specific content to specific groups, essentially connecting, creating tribes.
What’s next for the internet is what will assist us in partnering, grouping, and associating more than ever to create ultimate forms of content. Not just any content – content created for the peculiar, the individualized, the artists. The internet has provided us unlimited information and it has provided us unlimited connection, but it has yet to harmoniously combine the two.
Of course, it’s not just about creating a medium that synchronizes information and connection, it’s also about creating more new groups to continue the cycle. What comes next won’t be something that can be monopolized when its goal is to continuously reproduce more of its kind.
Internet will have to morph into a medium where small groups get together to build on each others content with the assistance of other groups – not necessarily growing with them because they are focusing on a new idea already, but assisting in their artistic growth. It’s about the associated life in which the goal is to exit, meaning that the goal is to develop a new group, a new tribe.
It’s not just a melting pot of special people and great ideas, it’s artistic alchemy.
Stay Positive & What’s Next For Internet Can Be Predicted, What Will Be Produced From It, I Can’t Even Begin To Imagine
Garth E. Beyer
