Web 4.0 Manifesto

Good stuff. You’re way ahead of the curve with this one.

It’s useful to think about what the web needs to become besides the technology, so you have a good point spelling it out. But why would you need to number the manifesto “4.0″, when it could easily exist aside the technical aspects of these principles, being conceived as “3.0″?
Nonetheless, this whole numbering of the state of the web doesn’t make sense anyway, it’s just not tangible enough.
You could think outside the box and broaden the manifesto by lacking a number and just pointing it to the future another way…
Just my 2 cents.

Any time someone starts talking about what web sites look like, or how boring they are, and say it’s related in any way with “Web x.x”, it means they don’t know what “Web x.x” is and you can safely ignore the post.

According to the points listed above, Cornify.com should qualify as Web 4.0 then…

Web numbers point zeros are vaguely useful ways of clustering technological developments with the corresponding changes in idealism that these new technologies afford. So for instance, web 2.0 tech, like RSS, does mean you can personalise your online experience in a completely different way than before. Likewise, web 3.0 does mean that we’re likely to have access to the entire web literally from anywhere you are from any device - it is the web unlocked from the device used to access it. These are pretty major changes that /should/ bring with them a corresponding idealism about what cultural changes these might affect.

It may seem wrong headed to have idealism follow technological development, but that’s normally the way things work and at the very least is the most effective way to describe the history of ideas. The historiography cites technological development as the precipitator of a change in ideology but it’s is more likely that it is simply easier to track an evolution in technical competency than it is to track the evolution of an idea. So whilst the discourse may be on technology, what we’re actually having a conversation about is still, broadly speaking, the progress of human ideas and expression of it.

A classic example is flash mobs - we talk about them as if they are some quintessentially millenial event brought on by the advent of mobile phones and online social networking, but a little dig around reveals that actually their roots extend back to turn of 20th century ‘happenings’. The current discourse focusses on connectivity but it’s part of a wider conversation about publicity stunts, protests, big socials or other ‘mass’ events throughout human history.

When someone says to themselves, “I should be able to see in the dark” or “I should be able to talk to someone long distance”, and then goes ahead and invents something to achieve that objective, which then becomes so mainstream people are born never knowing a time when it didn’t exist, it can’t be fair to say it is a lack luster approach to technology, or a lack luster idea of what can be achieved with technology.

To be pedantic (i thought you’d appreciate it :), i’ve annotated your manifesto with objections and counterpoints of my own.

On Web 4.0, people count, not technology.
–>That’s the principle idea of web 2.0! Forget accessible, searchable and global - all i want is my friends life streams and twitter! twitter! twitter! (yawn)

On Web 4.0, the metrics for success are not conversion or bounce rates—they’re art, originality, creativity.
–>But how would you put a metric on art, originality and creativity? How many times it gets a fwd? Page views, repeat visitors, conversion and bounce rates most likely… A post modern metric might be how many times it gets re-made, but then we’re back at web 2.0 and it’s effect on brand deconstruction.

On Web 4.0, content is not king—joy, amazement and delight are king.
Erm… when i write a short story i hope you experience one of these emotions. Particularly delight; The values cited were already the motive to create the content. I hate to say it but under this manifesto item, those “good karma if you forward to 10 friends” emails, that are the bane of my life, have already won!

On Web 4.0, a successful site is one that makes people gasp, shout, cry or play.
Yes, but again pretty much true of any successful ‘product’.

On Web 4.0, if you’re not taking risks, people aren’t interested.
Good on you for writing this post bro…

On Web 4.0, you can’t challenge convention—convention doesn’t exist. The key words aren’t the cloud, apps, feeds, blogs. They’re colour, typography, design, art, emotion, space. Things such as sidebars, leader boards, headers and plain blocks of text seem like old fashioned anachronisms.
–> all of this could be blocked together as the same idea. A lot of this kind of stuff is likely to come with innovations in vector graphics which is seen to be central to the concept of web 3.0.

On Web 4.0, people don’t consume content—they learn, wander, explore, play.
That’s what web 2.0 is all about

Anyways… just trying to offer constructive feedback. Sorry for abusing your scrollbar! And keep going! Was helpful me to at least formulate my thoughts on the matter.

For some reason this passage came to me whilst writing: (i think themes of peacefullness, the picturesque, cryptic questions, tower of babel, lighthouse and fragments of one’s own conscience being so intertwined with space that one may almost feel themselves as the detritus that washes upon the shore; and that somehow perfecting a harmony, seemed somehow relevant - take from it whatever)

” I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam uti chelidon–O swallow swallow
Le prince d’Aquitaine a la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
Da. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih”
-T.S. Eliot

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Whilst I love the sentiment behind your post, I’m not sure I’m in complete agreement.

For me the web is primarily about enabling communication and the sharing of resources on a level which was previously impossible. Therefore to my mind content comes first.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t think people should be creative when it comes to using web technology. I do. I think there are those for whom the web has become their medium of choice when it comes to creativity, and from some of these people I think we see material of the sort you describe in your manifesto.

For others their medium of choice is something else - words or paint for example. The vast proportion of people using the internet are more concerned with functionality and ease of use than creativity. I don’t see anything wrong with this.

So I am not particularly concerned with the growing number of perfectly functional, but ultimately rather boring and generic sites that we’re seeing, as long as creativity is happening somewhere.