First debate in the Moodle forum

Kevin Kelly, author that we have been studying in class and editor of Wired magazine, has recently talked about the first five thousand days of the Web in an informal meeting at the EG 2007 Conference, where he, also, shared with all of us through a revealing video his main thoughts about how he thinks the future of the Web will be. Summing up, we could say that Kelly announces three main changes in the evolution of the Web:

• An increasing contribution of users

• The ’semantic’ Web

• The AI of the Machine

Discovering Kevin Kelly

When we think of people that have revolutioned the field of computer science, one name that always crosses our minds in first place is Kevin Kelly. Mr. Kelly is a world wide recognized conservationist, photographer, writer and, above all, digital culture expert.

Kevin Kelly

Kevin Kelly has worked and published for extremely prestigious newspapers and magazines (New York Times, Esquire, The Economist, Life, Time…), but one of the many remarkable points in his literary career is, probably, being the founding executive editor of Wired, the succesful computer related magazine.

Let’s find out the hypertext

When we talk about hypertext we are basically referring to text on a computer screen that will redirect the user to other related information. Hypertext has recently become a huge innovation to user interfaces because it has been able to overcome some of the limitations that traditional written text presents. Instead of remaining static, hypertext offers us the possibility of organizing the information in a much more dynamic way. But how do we do that exactly? The answer is easy. We use links and connections, which are, logically, called hyperlinks. Nowadays, the best expression of hypertext we have is the Web.

Hypertext diagram

Hypertext’s great multifunctionality is something remarkable. These hyperlinks can be designed to perform a large number of tasks. For example when someone ‘cliks’ on one of these hyperlinks, or ‘hovers’ over it, a word definition may appear, a web page on a related topic may load, a video may begin, or, even, an application may open.