PageRank and “The Internet’s Vanishing Point?”
The article I read separates the development of the Internet into four different eras. When it first started, the internet was used almost entirely as a means for storage of things that could also be put into print; the internet was essentially a “web based magazine”. Documents and information were saved on the web into directories, and the access points, or “portals”, were what gave users the ability to see the pre-digital world content. The second era, which the article aptly calls “one of search”, is what we in our generation have grown familiar with today. The development of the PageRank algorithm, which served as a basis for the Google search engine, brought the birth of surfing the web. The information was out there, just as always, and users now had a means to search for and find whatever it was they wanted to find. What we live in now, contrary to what some of you may believe, is a hybrid between the era of search, and the future of the internet as predicted by the article. Not only do we have the ability to use search engines to scrape content from the depths of the web, we also have mobile apps (such as Facebook and Twitter), along with their own algorithms for delivering user’s content, which curate information specific to our interests and tendencies. The fourth era, which has not yet been realized in our world, is dubbed the “Thinternet” by the article I read. They foresee screens and applications being the medium for nearly all access to the Internet. Let me extrapolate on that a bit: in a world where everything is connected, the internet serves as an underlying “tissue” or network that gives anything connected access to everything. But, no longer will the user depend on their own intuition to sift through the material on the web; applications will serve as the medium for everything a user sees on his/her screen. The applications will personalize the information the user receives to whatever they (or algorithms within the application) specify, and what we will see of the world-wide-web will be solely what comes to us as a product of that.
Now, the fourth era that they predict is definitely a bit of a conjecture: there is no actual evidence to back up any of their predictions. But, at the same time, it does seem feasible. Many people today use Facebook, Twitter, and other social media outlets as their main medium for information digestion. How many of us Cornell students do you think get their news solely from things of this nature? That isn’t to say whatever they’re reading isn’t legitimate, but it’s much easier to stay up to date with, say, new articles from The Wall Street Journal when Twitter gives you a notification every time they post something new. What is interesting to think about, assuming the web continues in the direction the article predicts, is the implications it will have on PageRank. Will it become obsolete? I am sure that saying yes to that question would be a bit far fetched, the basis of that algorithm will most likely be relevant for as long as information retrieval is a thing. However, it isn’t hard to imagine that each of these supposed applications, that serve as a users medium for information, develop their own similar algorithms that are specific to the purposes of both their application and the user. PageRank is something like a one fix solution for everyone who wants to find something on the web, whereas these algorithms in these applications would cater much better for each individual user.
http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/23/the-internets-vanishing-point/