Friday, January 02, 2009

IPv6 shift and the locus of personal interests.

Is there anyone left younger than 50, or maybe 40, who isn't online 24/7? Being online has a different sensibility now. It's not that one lives before a computer so much as one is in some way there and participating. For instance, Twitter is an aggregator for me as much as it is a microblogging tool. Each morning I start at page 12 and read forward. That doesn't catch me up by any stretch (it used to when I followed only a couple hundred people), but it gives me a sense of what's being said by the people I follow.

Given this, it doesn't surprise me to read that one of Bob Gourley's predictions is that the IPv6 shift will begin in homes. Being online is practically synonymous with rich content now. The effect of rich content is to make online experiences more personal rather than less. I wouldn't be surprised to hear at some point that as the content gets richer, the time people spend online decreases rather than increases.

Thoughts? Additional context? You know where the 'leave a comment' link is.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice piece. I can't believe you do what I want to do every day - "fully catch up with the Twitter feed." Like reading the entire New York Times, ah I remember that thrill - I rarely do that anymore except the occasional plane trip with a copy in my lap. But you're right about the immersive experience, and it only deepening its call as speed & richness increase.

Heather Miller said...

Thanks, Lewis. I'm a former NYT reader as well, and I miss that particular immersive experience. Yet I also enjoy the challenge of piecing together ideas from different sources. Once a researcher, always a researcher, I guess. Here's to being perpetually lost in thought.