EventWeb is here, Now.

The message from this year’s CES in Los Vegas is loud and clear. The three screens in our life — TV, PC, and Mobile phone — are no longer different. When Google and Yahoo announce partnerships on one hand with Video and TV companies and on the other hand with Motorola and other phone makers to put special buttons on mobile phones to directly connect to their sites, you know that the three screens are merging and soon will be really unified in terms of content and access.

Another implicit message is that the long lived flat portable surface carrying visual information (though representing mostly abstract information called text) called paper documents that dominated the PC screen is on the way to being delegated to secondary status. Yes, this is beginning of the end of dominance of Gutenberg era. Gutenber legacy will live and will live very long but its dominance as the (mostly only) medium is going to change drammatically. This also means another thing that is far more subtle. So far abstract reports of important experiences of events dominated communication. The above changes combined with the ease of carrying video cameras in your pocket (also called phones) and putting sensors anywhere is going to make bringing event experiences in more vivid form more common.

I know some of you do think that they really want to communicate using text and that is the best medium. I remember, however, that you also believed that who will care for color photographs because BW photos have all that you need so why pay for color. And you did say the same thing for color TV, and you said the same thing about the stereo sound, and ….

So what do I mean by EventWeb or a web of events. Well I mean just that — a web of events rather than a web of documents that the current Web is. And to explain all implications of EventWeb, I will require a book. So let me start working on it. I will definitely share my thoughts on this more frequently while starting to work on the book.

2 thoughts on “EventWeb is here, Now.

  1. Amir

    Dear Dr. Jain

    Do you see EventWeb replacing the current document-driven web, or rather coexisting with it? In other words, I cannot see how information can be presented solely in the context of events. Is there a notion of event-independent information, and if so, how would that be represented in EventWeb?

    Thank you.

  2. Ramesh Post author

    DocumentWeb brings important iformation to us and will exist. EventWeb will rise from where it is now. In a few years there will be interesting combinations of these two — ultimately events and entities are intertwined in many aspects.
    Both events and entities help each other so will EventWeb and DocumentWeb.

Leave a Reply