UvA Scenario Topics
Web 2.0
Please select a topic as your group and start researching it, by picking 20 initial questions, and using the Wiki to share the answers
Web 1.0 Web 2.0
DoubleClick --> Google AdSense
Ofoto --> Flickr
Akamai --> BitTorrent
mp3.com --> Napster
Britannica Online --> Wikipedia
personal websites --> blogging
evite --> upcoming.org and EVDB
domain name speculation --> search engine optimization
page views --> cost per click
screen scraping --> web services
publishing --> participation
content management systems --> wikis
directories (taxonomy) --> tagging ("folksonomy")
stickiness --> syndication
Future of Copyright
Will copyright exist in the next 10 years. Will open content models such as the Wikipedia, with content published under GNU licence dominate the landscape or will the use of content be narrowly defined. At the heart of this debate you can explore notions of originality in the creation and in culture, intellectual property, and the contrast generational differences in perceptions of ownership of content. Useful places to start looking are:
Internet Archive Larry Lessig WIPO Jack Valenti iTunes Open DRM Leonardo Chiariglione
Future of Broadband With more that 100 million broadband users the underlying access technology of the internet is changing. This enables a new set of applications, new business models and the revisiting of old business models. People today spend four times as much time on the internet as in the heydays of 2000. Very different conceptions of broadband access. Several of the cable and television and telecoms companies see broadband as distribution means for, television, similar to the airwaves, but in this case allowing for pay for view access of the content, therefore would like high downstream speeds and low upstream speed. Internet companies (Google, Yahoo, Amazon) see this as interactive infrastructure and therefore want more synchronous (i.e. equal up and downstream speeds). The current debate of net neutrality, is the start of the coming painful convergence of television, music and telephony on the internet and IP as a base architecture. Useful places to look are:
Vint Cerf (at Google) Broadband use statistics Music Download models Broadband providers IP ver 6 Always On
Future of the Creation of Software Two models of software creation are locked in a battle to the end. Will most software be created as proprietary systems or created as open source in all it hybrid forms. Can 25 000 best in class developers in Redmond produce a superior operating system in contrast to a million registered Linux amateur developers? At the heart of the debate are conceptions of ownership, creativity, professionalism, and the consumer economy. Will software patents make a comeback, as a possible limitation of open source in the future? Is there a third way, with open standards such as used in MPEG4 and by SAP? Useful places to look are:
O’Reilly Publishing Sourceforge Microsoft Sun Lunix (Red Hat) IBM SAP
Future of Mash Ups Development on the Internet in the late 90s was characterised by building large all service web sites. These web sites were “closed” and rarely used services from other sites. Mashup, a term originally used in music, is the process of using resources and functionality from other “sites” which open their API’s. They are also described as web application hybrids. Mashup developers source the content for a mashup from the open applications programming interface (API) of third-parties such online companies as Google and Yahoo! Desired features from each API are then mixed in order to create a new, and sometimes better, application. Two other methods for sourcing content for mashups include Web feeds (e.g. RSS) and JavaScript. This results in very different modes of creating services on the web. Issues such as ownership and stability are still unresolved. Useful places to look are:
Amazon Google Maps Salesforce.com Craigslist vs. HousingMaps.com
Future of Rich User Experience HTML is a limited standard for displaying rich content. It is an easy but not a powefull markup language, yet it dominates the web. A set of standards and tools are emerging that will make user experiences of the web, much richer and more interactive. AJAX, Flash are providing the underlying technology. Nor is the browser as an interface on the web a given, OS X 10.4 Widgets for example are small applications that are “web aware” but provide sniplets of information such as weather, stock portfolio quotes, etc. What could those experiences be in the next 10 years? What business models will they enable? Useful places to look are:
AJAX Macromedia Flash Gmail Google Maps Widgets Konfabulator