We are slowly entering an new phase in online, in our digital life. As internet started before the web, it was a communication medium. E-mail as the most solid representative. When we got the web about 20 years ago internet became a publication medium and information base. Hyperlinking lead to surfing from article to article. Google optimised the system with relatively evaluating links.
Ten years later, in 2004, we got the social web. The network effect was strengthened by adding the people angle. It generated a huge uplift of the use of the web and the role it takes in our life. The open web with APIs was invented parallel and mobile did generate a wave on its own.
And now we are another 10 years later and we see the shift to the mix of the digital and the real. Often coined as the internet of things. But I like the term solid internet a lot. Internet lifestyle – thanks to the combination of social web and smartphone use – is the default and the physical is as a solid node in this.
I also like the definition of ‘the internet of the daily life’ as a good representation of the change that is happening. Internet is not a place you go to, it is part of everything, and you do not think about it. This is of course specially true for the digital natives that are become of age now after 20 years.
An interesting aspect is how this new balance between digital and real is influencing the way we look at the physical things. We expect our things to act like digital. We want products to be adaptable to the use, more platforms than products, playful and have new forms of interaction beyond the screen. We adapt new development methods, we have 3D printing as a first iteration of the new things.
This is all just at the beginning. Hardware produced as software is not that easy, as a lot of the Kickstarter projects prove.
The consequences of this shift to the internet of daily life and the impact for making a new type of things is what I think is an important theme of the Things-conference, that was organised in Berlin in May this year.
I hope we can touch this same theme coming Friday at the first ThingsConAMS, info.nl is hosting and I’m co-organising during the celebration of our 20 year history as internet agency, marking the next decade in internet history.
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