What do you want the web to be?
One of the questions that OneWebDay tries to get people to think about is: What do you want the web to be? (And what helpful web-related action are you going to take on Sept. 22?)
Here's a forward-looking attempt: the Metaverse Roadmap.
As far as I can tell, the Metaverse Roadmap is an attempt to predict how the future web will affect society. When video games, virtual worlds, and web applications all merge, what will we have? Obviously, we'll have the metaverse, but what does that mean?
From the web site:
Like other potentially disruptive new technologies, metaverse/3D web related technologies can each be expected to follow a hype cycle. Gartner's classic five phase technology hype cycle model, from 1. Technology Trigger, to 2. Peak of Inflated Expectations, to 3. Trough of Disillusionment, to 4. Slope of Enlightenment, to 5. Plateau of Productivity. Virtual reality technology, artificial intelligence, first gen web virtual reality (VRML), and others have all been through peaks and troughs. A dot.com peak, with companies basing their business models on inflated expectations for metaverse technology, followed by a trough, will almost certainly be a key dynamic of the next ten years.
Sounds great. I hope I live long enough to see what happens after the hype cycle has run its course — it's been great to see the rebound after the bust a few years ago. Things are becoming so interesting right now.