"The Future Of Social Media Is Already History"

Moore's law describes a driving force of technological and social change in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The period is often quoted as 18 months because of Intel executive David House, who predicted that chip performance would double every 18 months. But a lot has changed since those predictions of the 60s and 70s. Futurist Ray Kurzweil says it best: "We won't experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century — it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today's rate). Just think about how much things have changed in the past 10 years—wireless internet, smart phones, Facebook and Twitter—and then try to imagine how vastly different things will be in 2021, or even 2100.

A lot of people find fault with Kurzweil's prediction that the Singularity (the technological event horizon beyond which our human imaginations can't even fathom–think androids, immortality, and interstellar travel) will occur in 2045. I believe it 100%. I believe it because in 1997 while at NEC Research labs, I saw the prototype for what we know call "Google Glasses." I believe it because in 1993 while at PARC, I saw 3D printing and I learned about nanotechnology and molecular manufacturing.

Many people refute the predictions because they believe that at some point scientists can no longer make these giant strides. But according to Kurzweil, "even if scientists do hit a wall with silicon-based circuits, something will emerge to take its place".

 

• Energy - Solar power, which relies on nanotechnology, will be cheap enough and powerful enough to power the entire world
     within 20 years, says Kurzweil.
• Neuroscience – Projects to reverse-engineer the brain will construct a full, synthetic model by 2029, says Kurzweil, giving us
     greater insight into how the brain thinks.
• Genetics – Within 10 years we will all have digital copies of our genome, leading to medical therapies are personalized to our
     individual genetic makeup.
• Nanotechnology – As robots get smaller and smaller, we will be able to insert them into our bodies to repair damaged or aging
     tissue.

So now to our topic, Social Media. Hopefully, my little detour to the near future makes you realize that nothing will ever stay as it is today - and that the rate of change is accelerating so fast that anything new today is really also old today. What I really like about all of this is that the future is no longer in the future!

Now for lovers of the web and social media there are some distinct changes occurring right now. I hear a lot of people touting web 2.0 but we are already well into Web 4.0 development. No one thought we would be here in 2014 and that's my point.

 

• Web 0.0 – Developing the internet
• Web 1.0 – The shopping carts & static Web
• Web 2.0 – The writing and participating Web
• Web 3.0 – The semantic executing Web
• Web 4.0 – Open, Linked & Symbiotic Web

Web 4.0 changes everything we thought the web could become. It's all about linked data that becomes easily transformed into intelligence - anywhere, anytime with the click of a mouse. Web 5.0 will do even more. It's all about Star Trek because you won't be at a keyboard sending off tweets or posting messages. You will be thinking those tweets and messages and they'll appear wherever you want, whenever you want with you speaking it live and virtually.

So while today's social media gurus are developing future improvements and new applications, those are already history simply because social media itself will undergo a radical transformation in a world that doesn't need social media because it is social media.