Some future trends for the Internet and museums - the video
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Presented at Museum & Gallery Services Queensland seminar, Creative Uses of the Collection, 11 Sep 2008
Also available at the M&GSQ website: video and audio
Summary
I attempt to plot a number of future possibilities in terms of probability and desirability:
- Spam to increase (almost certain), which may lead to...
- The total collapse of email, as we now know it, under the weight of spam. While this would undoubtedly be a major disaster, it may have at least one beneficial consequence:
- RSS (syndication) to become mainstream.
- Internet connections to become faster and/or cheaper, which should allow...
- Rich content (video, audio) to increase.
- Online advertising to increase (but there is evidence that returns are diminishing).
- Smart commercial links (in which success depends on how useful the user perceives it to be) to also increase.
- Semantic web to become more pervasive (content not just for human consumption but for also machine consumption, making mashups possible - eg: US Presidents) But, perhaps more importantly...
- Semantic web to become easier for non-tech people (MIT's Simile project is a step in the right direction).
- Visitor-generated content to increase. (But there needs to a move towards quality visitor- generated content.)
- Copyright restrictions to decrease (at least for the museum/cultural/non-profit sector). This is more of a hope than a prediction!
- Open standards to increase, allowing...
- Greater separation of content and presentation, and hence...
- Greater diversity of platforms and personalisation.
- Will non-standard (Flash) navigation increase? Hopefully not.
Here's the actual plot (sorry if it's a bit hard to read):
