First Anniversary of the Thinking Space Blog

(read the story also in Chinese)

It has been a year since the first launch of this blog. The community of Thinking Space blog grows dramatically in the past year. An unknown author, a pure scientific blog, an average of 6 day/post, no entertainment at all. Thinking Space has grown from less than 400 visits during the first three months to more than 8600 visits after a year. I must express my sincere appreciation to all the readers. It is you who give me and this blog the honor to be one of the few must-read blogs about semantic web and new-generation web technologies.

The Thinking Space blog now has a visual logo, which is a purple blowing dandelion. This logo presents an expectation from the author that distinguished thoughts land on and grow up at anywhere.

Theme of Thinking Space

Bloggers author for various reasons. Thinking Space is distinct from many other blogs in its theme.

1. Thinking Space does not focus on broadcasting newest achievements on the current Web. For readers who are more interested in this theme, blog sites such as Read/WriteWeb, Nadilities, and Between the Lines are better choices.

2. Thinking Space is not an information digest center. For readers who want to read more about digested commentary of recent web achievements, blog sites such as ebiquity (more academic oriented), Enterprise Web 2.0 (more industrial oriented), and SemanticFocus (in the middle) are better choices.

3. Thinking Space is also not a normal personal web blog that produces daily reports on events happening around the authors. Blog sites fitted into this category are numerous. Some marvelous examples such as Nova Spivack's Minding the Planet, Tim O'Reilly's O'Reilly Radar, Jeff Jarvis' BuzzMachine, Jeremiah Owyang's Web Strategy, Stephen Downes' Half an Hour, and Danny Ayers' Raw.

Thinking Space is an explorative blog. The theme is to suggest innovative thoughts on the future of World Wide Web. Being innovative is providing distinctive observations and novel viewpoints. The motto of this blog is to be original, be venturous, and be real.
       (1) Innovation requires original thoughts.
       (2) Innovation requires venturous spirit. We take risks on claiming.
       (3) Innovations are not wild dreams. Thinking space is not dreaming space. We carefully exam persuasive evidences to the claims we made.

The Thinking Space primarily thinks of future rather than present or past. Though I often apply historical and evolutionary analysis in this blog, the ultimate goal is fixed on discovering the hidden paths to the unknown future.

I recommend a few other blogs who are also about innovation and future. For examples, Tom Stafford and Matt Webb's Mind Hacks, Kevin Kelly's The Technium and Tim Berners-Lee's blog.

Annual Summary of Posts

During the past year, there are totally 64 posts in Thinking Space. On average the updating frequency is close to 6 day/post. These posts cover the topics from philosophical thoughts to practical advices, and from general web evolution paradigm to particular industrial event. In the following I briefly summarize these posts.

Special series: A View of Web Evolution
This series expresses what this blog is distinct to the others. In this series, I explain a new thought of why and how World Wide Web grows. In short, this view is based on two hypotheses: (1) the Web is a self-organizing system that obeys objective web evolution laws, and (2) the growth of WWW simulates the growth of humans. This series contains 10 installments, which are ...

1. In the Beginning …
2. Three Basic Evolutionary Properties of World Wide Web
3. Two Fundamental Postulates
4. Mapping between Web Evolution and Human Growth
5. Identity of Evolutionary Stages
6. Qualities of Evolutionary Stages
7. Trigger of Transition
8. Initiative of a Stage Transition
9. Essence of Web Evolution
10. Signal of the Completion of a Web Stage Transition

Other posts on fundamentals of Web Evolution

1. Kelly's Theory of Personality
       a foundation of the view of web evolution
2. Quality and Quantity
       another philosophical foundation of the view of web evolution
3. How deep do we want to clone ourselves?
       a foundational thought about web evolution
4. The religionary side of World Wide Web
       watch WWW from a new angle, is WWW a religion? another foundational thought about web evolution
5. Web Space
       explain a particular definition based on web evolution

The Facts of Semantic Web from the Evolutionary Point of View
Many readers of this blog are either energetic supporters or persistent opponents to semantic web. I am a supporter, but not an unconditional supporter. I persist on several principles that are currently uncommon. In my belief, the realization of Semantic Web is an evolutionary event but not an instant goal attempt.

1. A Simple Picture of Web Evolution
       a visualized path towards the Semantic Web (The most visited post at Thinking Space in the past year, close to 1000 visits in the first ten days.)
2. Semantic Web: Difficulties and Opportunities
       marketing semantic web is beyond the claim of "a web of data"
3. Semantic Web is closer to be real, isn't it or is it?
       who will take the control of semantic definitions is a main obstacle to construct semantic web (from the macroscopic view)
4. The Key to Initiate the Semantic Web
       to satisfy the nature of selfishness is another main obstacle to construct semantic web (from the microscopic view) (full version of this post is at SemanticFocus)
5. Some Truth about the Semantic Web
       several often confused but debatable issues about semantic web (full version of this post is at SemanticFocus)
6. What does tagging contribute to the web evolution? | An introduction of web thread
       a new vision of the underlying structure of a semantic web, see also Weaving the Thread-Driven Semantic Web (full version of this post is at SemanticFocus)
7. Semantic search has two legs
       semantic search is not "semantic" + "search," but "semantic understanding" + "proactive collaboration"
8. Epistemological extension to ontologies: a key of realizing Semantic Web?
       the importance of epistemological declarations to the construction of semantic web
9. Semantic Web and The World is Flat
       semantic web fits to the vision of flat world
10. Ultra-scale Information Management: no place for rigid standards
       the gap between visible data and understandable data is more far away than we think in ultra-scale information management systems

Web 2.0
Web 2.0 is an earlier stage to Semantic Web in web evolution. Several posts in the category of Semantic Web are also about Web 2.0. Here are a few more.

1. We and Machine
       "We are becoming part of a great machine." Do you agree on it? This claim fits my view of web evolution, while the previous sentence was actually made by Tim O'Reilly.
2. Web 2.0 panel on World Economic Forum
       What is Web 2.0? Caterina Fake, Bill Gates, Chad Hurley, Mark G. Parker, and Viviane Reding answered; and I responded to their answers.
3. The Two-Year Birthday of AJAX
       Why is Web 2.0 "2.0" but not "1.x"? AJAX.
4. Moving toward machine processing---the certain destiny of web evolution
       Web 2.0 and continuous partial attention, and how they affect web evolution
5. Degree of Separation on Web 2.0
       the degree of separation at Web 2.0 must be less than the degree of separation at Web 1.0 studied by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

Responses to Industrial Achievements
A few personal opinions about several interesting industrial news in the past year.

1. Clone: An Interesting Topic on the Web
       Are web clones positive to the growth of World Wide Web? My answer is yes.
2. Web Search, is Google the ultimate monster?
       Is Google unbeatable in the market of web search? Certainly not and there are reasons.
3. New web battle is announced
       Google versus Microsoft. But why Yahoo is also mentioned?
4. Yahoo! had a new CEO. Can Jerry Yang lead the company to a new level?
       Yahoo hires a new CEO. Does it help?
5. Lessons Learned from Yahoo's Mistake
       There is a deadly internal reason to the growth of Yahoo.
6. A Blend of Future --- some thoughts after the "10 Future Web Trends"
       We do not need ten futures; we need only one. How to blend 10 trends into one vision?

Responses to Academic Literature
Personal responses after casually reading a few good academic literature in the past year. The selected academic literature is well written to normal readers.

1. Creating a Science of the Web
       Tim Berners-Lee, Wendy Hall, James Hendler, Nigel Shadbolt, Daniel J. Weitzner. The masterpiece about initiative of Web Science.
2. Embracing "Web 3.0"
       Ora Lassila and James Hendler's vision of Web 3.0
3. Evolution of Web Links, another direction of thoughts
       Danny Ayers' thoughts of web link evolution
4. Two Websense columns by Danny Ayers
       Danny Ayers' vision about the future web
5. We are the Web
       Kevin Kelly's remarkable article about humans and World Wide Web
6. The Death of Computing
       Neil McBride's hot and much debatable article on the future of Computer Science education

Announcement of a New Series: "The Path towards Next Generation"

This new series is the follow-up of "A View of Web Evolution." In the previous series, we have discussed a new view of why and how World Wide Web grows. In this new series I continue the discussion to foresee the next generation Web. I will make many claims and show the evidences of the claims. When no one can indeed guarantee things that have not happened, please read with much attention, and try to argue the claims to the limit.

Let this blog be a real thinking space, a hub of collective intelligence.