The Third Year Anniversary (3)

Intuitive Ideas

The posts in this collection are classified in four topics: Web, semantics, economy, and miscellaneous.

Web Science & Web Evolution

1. Evolution, a topic uneasy. Evolution does exist. But it does not contradict to the existence of creator. Web evolution is a typical example.

2. Steve Ballmer claimed: "only three things on the Internet that have made money". The model of Web evolution matches this claim.

3. President Obama, World Wide Web, the start of a new era. Isn't the real world nothing but another virtual world?

4. Build new centrifugal momentum on the Web. Now it is the time for us to build new centrifugal momentum on the Web.

5. swing between big and small. The swing between big and small in evolution must be constant cycle.

6. World Wide Web spreads like religions. As title.

7. Your online identity is a treasure inheritable. May we monetize it further?

8. The Golden Time of World Wide Web is coming. The financial crisis brought great opportunity to accelerate the Web evolution.

9. Art and Engineering. The relation between art and engineering in Web evolution.

10. The Internet, a bordered or borderless world? The Web is not going to be borderless in real.

Semantics & Intelligence

1. Positive Solitude, the losing capability. Solitude, a seemly negative attitude, is indeed not only critical but also positive to our real life. But we are losing it by the progress of the Web evolution.

2. Do not exaggerate the importance of machines. Make a contrast between machine intelligence to human intelligence.

3. Variation of meanings. Semantics have various types.

4. Learnable and Unteachable. Certain semantics machines may be able to learn. But we might never be able to teach machines some other types of semantics.

5. Consciousness has no single "seat" in brain. A new scientific discovery may let us know better about collaborative intelligence in the Web.

6. Mind, Gene, Spirit. Where does thinking come? My fundamental viewpoint about the answer to the question.

7. How to construct a high quality ontology?. Some basic methodologies for constructing the real-world ontologies.

Economy & Politics

1. Virtual economy calls for new institution. The financial crisis is an inevitable result of the conflict between the economic form and the economic institution.

2. President Obama's Vision. Liu Junluo rendered President Obama's actions during the economic crisis.

3. Big Idea inspires us, but what is big idea?

Miscellaneous

1. A beautiful mind of creativity. Elizabeth Gilbert is beautiful. Her beauty is, however, not only in her look but also (and more importantly) in her mind of thinking.

2. Outliers. May you be an outlier by your own struggle?

3. My Impression of Twine 2.0. Twine might have missed something critical when it matches toward 2.0.

4. Innovation: discover the profoundness behind simplicity. Tell an idea to somebody. In 30 seconds the one thinks he gets the idea and agrees to it, but actually after another 30-minute explanation he still does not really know. This is thus an innovative business.

The Third Year Anniversary (2)

Analytical Insights

Again, the posts are ordered in accordance to my self-preference.

1. The Web is Expanding

World Wide Web is expanding, simultaneously in four facets---in the physical world, in the computational world, in the world of network communication, and in the financial world. The post supplements to my ThinkerNet post "a closer look at the expanding Web."

2. Five Web Trends Into 3.0: (1), (2), (3), (4), and (5).

Web 3.0 is coming. But what on earth is it? In a five-installment series, I expressed my viewpoint of Web 3.0. There are five major trends together pushing the Web to its post-2.0 age. The ultimate consequence is about to upgrade the Web from a web of platforms (filled by the user-generated content) to a web of marketplaces (filled by the user-generated asset).

3. Think beyond Build-A-BearVille (the Second Life for kids)

Build-A-BearVille is a fun place for kids. It, however, suggests much more than the primary intention. Build-A-BearVille shows us how we may virtualize the real world into the virtual world, and monetize the connection between the two worlds. Not only does this business model build true exchangeable value, but also it is generically applicable to nearly all the domains.

4. We intelligent because we connected, and unless we connected

Where does intelligence come? More and more evidences should that we intelligent only when our knowledge is connected to a greater network of knowledge. It is the quality of the outward links, in contrast to the quality of the inner knowledge nodes, that ultimately determines the level of intelligence. Thus, it is not hard to build a machine knowledgeable, but it is much more difficult to develop a machine intelligent.

5. From GeoCities to MySpace, another side of Web Evolution

MySpace is GeoCities 2.0. History repeats itself, but in an upgrading way.

6. Wall Street, Fall 2008: crisis, capital, risk, computation, and information

From studying the definitions of five terms (crisis, capital, risk, computation, and information) we can understand the financial crisis better. What the Wall Street hedge fund brokers have tricked us is making up equations measuring the equivalence between matter and information (in particular the information of risk). According to the quantum theory we discussed, however, the value of information per unit decreases definitely in time due to that the total amount of information constantly increases and the total amount of matter keeps constant. This is the theoretic reason behind this massive financial crisis.

7. The newspaper crisis

Newspapers are in crisis. "The cost of the raw information generation is minimized. The cost of static analysis over the raw information has been cheap. The cost of posting advertisement has been cheap. If the Web has decreased the value of nearly all the information asset in the traditional mean, what should we do to produce new type of information asset that can be charged decently in this new Web age?" It is really a question.

8. The Microsoft-Yahoo deal, Part 1 Yahoo, Part 2 Microsoft, Part 3 Google.

I have varied views about the Microsoft-Yahoo deal. The apparent winner might not necessarily be the ultimate winner and the apparent loser might indeed gain a chance of reborn. Moreover, we must not forget Google, the target of the deal.

9. The real-time web in a nutshell for Web developers and researchers

The real-time web has been hot. From the perspective of Web developers and researchers, what, however, is the real-time web? This post answers the question concisely.

The Third Year Anniversary (1)

It has been a tradition. In the October 1st of each year, I summarize the Thinking Space posts in the last year for another anniversary of the blog. The summary also becomes a comprehensive index of Thinking Space in a year.

This year in three installments I go over the Thinking Space articles from Oct. 1st, 2008 to Sep. 30, 2009.

The theme of the first installment is genuine thoughts, the original thinking that could not be found anywhere else except of this blog.

The theme of the second installment is analytical insights, the less genuine but more comprehensive analytical thoughts in their depth and broadness.

The theme of the last installment is intuitive ideas, the intuitive opinions about a few timely topics.

Genuine Thoughts

The posts with original thoughts might last. They are ordered in accordance to my self-preference.

1. It is the free choice that produces the value of mind

Believe it or not, Web business is entering a brand new age of embodying mind to be exchangeable asset. What is the key of monetizing mind asset? The question is worth of thinking and rethinking. As well as human labor is the basis of value generation in the real world, human free will (or free choice) is the basis of value generation in the virtual worlds like World Wide Web. Moreover, the next post expresses the thought within a broader background.

2. From UGC to UGA, and the limitation of Web 2.0

This post supplements to my Internet Evolution article "User Generated Content (UGC), Revisited" in which I revisited a few fundamentals of UGC. In this post, therefore, I extended the discussion by pointing out the key limitation of Web 2.0 according to business model. That nobody is willing to pay is because Web 2.0 itself has not really produced anything that is worth of being purchased! I then settle the argument that Web 3.0 will be a web of UGA (user-generated asset) in contrast to Web 2.0 be a web of UGC.

3. The upside down of the traditional thought on user interface

May user interface have to be external to the service? If the question sounds strange to you, think of it again. What would happen to the user interface if a service is not in a convex shape but in a concave shape? Now, is the thought still weird?

4. Gravitation, the Web, and Wikipedia

Semantics is the gravitation in the Web. This finding may help us solve some sophisticated semantic integration problems in the Web.

5. The Link in Linked Web

May we think of the Web a ternaristic world in contrast to a dualistic world? Traditionally link is known to be a special type of data. What would happen, however, if link is neither data nor service but just link itself? This view of link in the linked web may bring us a brand new interpretation of the Web.

6. Also, Consciousness vs. Memory

Memory is the reserved and refined consciousness. This distinction brings us hints about the fundamental difference between the regular Web and the real-time Web.

7. Web evolution has to have a purpose

The intrinsic reason of World Wide Web evolution is to realize the immortality of human mind. Web evolution must never be aimless. A global scale evolutionary event such as the Web evolution has to have a definite purpose so that the process could sustain. The thinking is impressed by Al Gore's Web 2.0 Summit talk "Web 2.0 has to have a purpose".

8. 7 best thoughts at Thinking Space 2008

A short summary of the seven best genuine thoughts posted in Thinking Space in 2008.

7 best thoughts at Thinking Space 2008

To be my 2008 Christmas gift for the Thinking Space readers, these are the 7 best thoughts blogged in 2008 out of more than 100 original ones. Wish all of you Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

7. The wisdom of crowds and the Brownian motion

The wisdom of crowds is a basic theory backing Web 2.0. The theory is, however, a reflection of a common physical phenomenon, the Brownian motion, in human society. The thought that the wisdom of crowds is the Brownian motion in human society was blogged in January 2008.

If this comparison is reasonable, there are general connections between the known physical laws and the unknown Web regulations. It thus may provide us a hint for the Web Science research. For example, since we can calculate the macroscopic velocity and direction of a flow based on the fluid dynamics computation over the microscopic-scale Brownian motion data of the flow, may we analogically compute the macroscopic behaviors of wisdom of crowds on the Web? Yes we can, can't we?

6. Automatic Character Switch (ACtS)

Automatic Character Switch (ACtS) is a proposed mechanism by myself to operate the resources produced by Web 2.0. In April 2007 I coined the term when I described my prediction of the next generation of World Wide Web based on the Web evolution model. In February 2008, I reused the proposed mechanism as a resolution for the issue of Web resource portability.

Although people think of Web 3.0 differently, something similar to ACtS should be an essential part of the picture of resolution. The ACtS intends to solving the problem of online identity overload, a milestone towards Web 3.0.

5. The expanding Web

The Web is expanding, and it expands simultaneously at the physical field, the computational field, the communicative field, and the financial field. I blogged this thought at Internet Evolution in October 2008.

We must know that the Web is growing in more than one aspect. We are seeing more variety of devices accessing the Web, more different methods to consume Web resources, better instant communication among Web users, and we start to construct new forms of asset because of the Web evolution. Only by well understanding these varieties of Web expansion, we may indeed get the purpose of Web evolution.

4. Invariants on the Web

Although the Web changes all the time, learning the unchanged side of the Web will help us understand better of the Web, and eventually let us be able to invent the changes we expect. The July 2008 post of Web invariants is about this topic.

In tradition, we have invented URI (references to facts) being a fundamental Web invariant. But the reference to a fact is essentially different from the fact itself. Therefore, it is questionable to enforce object reference replacing object itself being invariant. By contrast, may we ask epistemological procedure and Web thread (two more essential characters of objects) to new Web invariants?

3. Mind asset

The current economic crisis is due to the abuse of capital, the essence of the capitalist business. Hence some fundamental change of business must be done in order to avoid this sort of crisis in the future. On the other hand, if the change is done so fundamental to our society, wouldn't it lead our society into a new age? When people start to talk about new DNA of the next generation business, the new DNA I believe is the mind asset, which I have blogged since May 2008.

Mind asset is a compound new concept. In brief, it means a revolutionary way of monetizing human thinking. It claims that the general driving force of production is shifting gradually from capital to human mind. In the other words, mind starts to conduct money in contrast to money buys mind. This shift of power of production assigns thinkers a new role in the coming new society.

2. Mind, a universal fundamental in addition to mass and energy

Mind is always a mysterious thing. We hardly know where it comes and where it goes. After reading Seth Lloyd's brilliant book "Programming the Universe" at September 2008, I started to wonder whether the relationship between mind and mass is the same as the relationship between wave and particle. If this analogy truly holds, mind is another universal fundamental in the world in addition to mass and energy.

All of us exists in waves (the form of mind) when we are not under detection either by other persons or by ourselves. Once we are detected (i.e., once the consciousness starts to work), however, we see each other existed in particles (the form of mass) only. At the same time, mind remains existing such as when we think since at the moment the mind is out of any external detector. Therefore, the mind still exists in waves and remains being mind (instead of being materialized). If the former interpretation be correct, an exciting conclusion would be that we could invent a new type of mind detector to transform any thinking into mass immediately. This invention, if ever it could be realized, would bring our world new form of energy we cannot imagine.

1. Great transition, happening at the global scale

We are in a new transition, part 1 and part 2. This is probably the most critical message of today. Capitalism is dying. We are moving to a new age of human society, which is, however, neither the socialism nor the communism. Along with Adam Lindemann, I would like to call this new time the mind age (or the harmonious age by emphasizing the harmonious union of all human mind).

From land to capital then to mind, the most valuable (and the most essential) asset of human society is evolving. This fundamental evolution is beyond any other progress happening in our society. This is really what we need to be aware and what we should try to follow.

Through the post, I thank my savior and father in heaven, Jesus Christ, who give me wisdom and the ability of thinking. Happy birthday!

Second Year Anniversary (3)

The summary of Thinking Space from October 2007 to September 2008. The posts are organized in three major categories: Web evolution, industrial actions, and instant thoughts.

Web Evolution

1) Web Science

Invariants on the Web: what are the invariants on the Web? The answer may affect how we approach the next generation Web.

Online Identity: is OpenID the eventual solution to the online identity problem? By answering it, we should first take a look at the essential characters of identities.

2) Web 2.0

What is Web 2.0? my explanation of Web 2.0.

Macroscopic regularity over microscopic Brownian motion | the secret beneath the wisdom or crowds: the wisdom of crowds and Brownian motion, combining the two we may learn some secrets behind Web 2.0.

Resource portability: resource portability, a superset of data portability, is a key to study Web evolution beyond Web 2.0.

Data Portability: The Next Great Frontier for the Web: my explanation of data portability.

3) Semantic Web

Abandon Babel, Welcome Society (the philosophy behind Semantic Web approaches): the first of the two main essays of my Semantic-Web vision. A realized Semantic Web must be more like a dynamic society of knowledge (a web of agents) than the knowledge Babel Tower (a web of data). The full text is at Semantic Focus.

Metadata or Hyperdata, Link or Thread, What is a Web of Data?the second of the two main essays of my Semantic-Web vision. The coexistence of a "web of data" and a "web of agents". The full text is at Semantic Focus.

Talk with Talis: interviewed by Paul Miller, I shared my thoughts of how to initiate Semantic Web in a practical way. The plan was executing. Unfortunately, however, due to some non-technical reason the execution paused .

The Curse of Knowledge and the Semantic Web: the curse of knowledge and a potential solution for ontology mapping. The full text is at Semantic Focus.

How to achieve the Semantic Web: a point of view based on Web evolution.

Building Semantics is Different from Building the Web: to build Semantic Web? Please think of it again. Are you actually constructing semantics or building a web? They are not the same.

A quick thought of semantic web: Is the W3C interpretation of Semantic Web realizable according to the second law of thermodynamics?

4) Transition to the next stage World Wide Web

Current Status of Web Evolution by Watching Web 2.0 Summit: my thought of Web evolution after watching the 2007 Web 2.0 Summit.

Multi-layer Abstractions: World Wide Web or Giant Global Graph or Others: in which role do we think of ourselves with respect to the Web? Purely as a reader, half reader half publisher, or mainly a publisher. Be note, the distinction of these answers is critical.

The emergence of social graphs: the emergence of social graphs and its impact to the Web evolution. This is my first article at Internet Evolution.

The Web is dynamic: how the Web is evolving from static to dynamic.

Upgrade RW to RWR: if Web 2.0 is the Read/Write Web, Web 3.0 might be the Read/Write/Request Web. This is my thought last year, which has been slightly different from what I am thinking now. The original full-text article is published at Semantic Report.

Evolution of Web Business: a few of my initial thoughts on the relationship between Web evolution and Web business. It is not a well written but some of the thoughts might still be interesting. The full text is at Semantic Report.

The initial signal of Web 3.0: probably it was the initial sign that the transition to Web 3.0 started.

Is Web 2.0 cycle coming to its end? yes and no: my argument to both Chris Shipley and Richard MacManus about the Web 2.0 cycle.

Web search in evolution: my viewpoints about the issues that drive the evolution of Web search. The full text is at Alt Search Engines blog.

Radar themes: my brief comments on several future trends declared by O'Reilly Radar.

Industrial Actions

1) Google

The Age of Google: a 4-installment series, my thoughts of Google, for celebrating Google's 10-year birthday.

The Revolution Behind Google Knol: Google Knol and the formation of mind asset.

Start to customize a new world: Google Chrome and its revolution.

2) Yahoo

In the past year, Yahoo started to revise its search engine and stepped into the realm of Semantic Web. This is, however, unsurprising. Despite of the loss to Google Search, Yahoo search was born with ranking by semantic understanding (though by humans at that time) rather than ranking by link popularity. This action is back to its origin at a higher level.

Yahoo updated its search: Yahoo's initial sign for embracing semantic web.

The Difference between Yahoo and Facebook: my prediction on the difference between Yahoo's open strategy and Facebook's open strategy. It is exciting that my prediction actually went true when watching Yahoo's later announcement of Y!OS, though at the meantime I had totally no clue at all about SearchMonkey and BOSS.

Y!OS, a new start of Yahoo? an ambitious but exciting Yahoo remodeling starts. Though doubtful of its scale, I do wish Yahoo's success.

Enough ants may bite an elephant to death: Yahoo BOSS is brilliant in its concept.

A swing between passion and reality: my support for Jerry Yang's mission. Jerry is a visionary, who often has to suffer much of the struggle between passion and reality.

3) Microsoft

Microsoft Windows: more than operating system: does Microsoft really know the potential of its Windows at this new Web age? Besides the post, I had tried to share more with Microsoft individually but failed. I start to understand why new companies may always have chances to defeat a giant.

Pay you to Live Search, brilliant? will the pay-to-search model succeed? I doubt.

Ahead The Read Ahead: Farewell, Bill, and we have learned from you both great experiences and precious lessons.

The secret behind Powerset acquisition: my thoughts about Microsoft's acquiring Powerset.

4) Facebook/LinkedIn

Social Network: devoting to plebeians or elites? my first post about Facebook and LinkedIn, apparently I favored Facebook more than LinkedIn at the beginning.

LinkedIn to Chinese market, oppotunity and challenge: taking LinkedIn as an example, some suggestions for US IT companies to enter China.

Facebook Paradox: real social or unreal social: it seems Facebook is contradicting to itself. Will this contradiction eventually hurt the company in long term?

5) Imindi

What indeed is imindi? a great new startup, brilliant idea and excellent service. This post is a shallow introduction of the service at the current stage. Way more future of the service is undisclosed. After the hostile reception at TC50, however, the startup is now fighting hard on improving the service and seeking for financial fund to keep on going. If it could survive, this company will be a representative of new generation business many investors are seeking in this financial crisis period.

Improve Human Intelligence: the opposite to Artificial Intelligence: instead of making computers smarter because of human beings, why not making humans smarter because of computers? The full text is at Internet Evolution with a varied title: A New Take on Internet-based AI.

6) Others

Twine: the first impression: my impression of Twine before it went public.

Twine: the second impression: my impression of Twine after my first test of its beta service.

ZCubes: towards Web 3.0: a brief analysis of ZCubes, an extraordinary multi-functional platform that brings users flexibility of mixing various Web formats.

YokWay moves forward: an introduction of YokWay, a collaborative bookmarking service.

Genome: rethinking of Social Networking: Vladislav Chernyshov's mission for creating a 2.0 social networking service.

Cuil Search: Cuil, novel in its resource production but not-good-enough on the search performance.

yourBusinessChannel, the Web 2.0 marketing: yourBusinessChannel, a typical example when traditional marketing meets Web 2.0.

Instant Thoughts

The Implicit Web: beneath the Web we visit daily, there is the implicit web that consists of a greater volume of delicate connections among Web resources.

Blink: an embarrassment of collective intelligence: my thoughts after reading Malcolm Gladwell's Blink.

Collectivism on the Web: a thoughtful list of many variations of collectivism that might (and probably also should) be implemented on the future Web.

Thinkers and The New Web Age: the role of thinkers in the coming new Web age, an extension of my post "Thinkers in the New Web Age" at Internet Evolution.

World Wide Web is not just for browsing, it is for branding yourself! as the title.

The Harmonious Age: introduction about Adam Lindemann's vision about the future.

We are in a new transition, Part 1: my vision of human society evolution.

Great thought may not be a secret: don't worry about keeping your great idea a secret, if it's good enough you will have to beat people over the head with it.

Measurement of Mind Asset: a discussion with Michel Bauwens, exploring the new concept "mind asset".

Failure and Success of Web Startups: make others be better, this is a key of surviving.

Programming the Universe, Part 1: quotes and thoughts about Part One of the book "Programming the Universe", many insightful claims made by Professor Seth Lloyd.

Programming the Universe, Part 2: my thoughts of information, energy, and mass based on Professor Seth Lloyd's discovery on quantum computation.

Quantum universe, mind, and idealism: a few more discussion after the review of "Programming the Universe."

Why do we bookmark? to predict the next generation online bookmarking services.

The future of email: to predict the future of the email service.

Blogging: to predict the future of blogging.

China, how to understand this country? introduction of China, for readers living at the western world.

Marketing strategy in social networks: business thought, analysis of a common misconception of marketing online social networks.

Modern management and creativity: business thought, the relationship between management and creativity in corporations.

New generation business demands new DNA: business thought, mind asset and the new DNA in new generation business.

Second Year Anniversary (2)

Until now Thinking Space has more than 160 posts. In this post I introduce three particular ones. Two of them are selected by the Thinking Space readers such as you, and the last one is picked by the author, i.e., me.

The all-time most popular post at Thinking Space

There is a Thinking Space post consistently having 20 or more visits nearly everyday after its first release more than one and a half years ago, and the record is continuing. This is an uneasy accomplishment even for the top news or blog sites. Few articles might be consistently interested by the public for more than a few weeks, let it alone lasting one and a half years already.

Web Evolution and Human Growth: a view of Web evolution, series No. 4

This post expresses the central point of my Web evolution theory. World Wide Web is primarily a society (in contrast to a brain, a machine, etc). Moreover, the evolution of this Web society is synchronizing with the growth of virtual individuals on the Web.

The visiting record shows that "Web evolution" remains being the No. One issue that Thinking Space readers care.

The best post of the last year, reader's selection

In the last year, the following post was visited the most heavily and also was the most popularly linked on the Web (over 300 external links up to the date recorded by Google).

The Age of Google (4): the future

Google search is probably the most popular and well-known Web service at the present Web. Hence any rational analysis of its weaknesses immediately causes great interest among readers. In the post, I predicted that some critical changes were about to happen.

Remember how Google has replaced Microsoft being the leader of IT industry. Microsoft was seemly unbeatable because of its dominating operating system. Isn't OS so fundamental that the leader of the OS market automatically must be the leader of IT industry? Well, OS remains to be critical but Google is ahead now.

In similar, isn't Web search so fundamental that the leader of the Web search market automatically must be the leader of IT industry?

Not necessary; history will repeat its answer. Web search will continue to be critical but the position of Google will be replaced. Due to Web evolution, new fundamental is going to emerge in similar to the relation between Web search and operating system. Some new company (unknown yet) will fade off Google (possibly in just a few years) the same way that Google has shadowed Microsoft.

The most recommended post in the past year, author's pick

This selection is very hard since all the posts are my babies. Behind each article, there is a story of thinking. If I have to choose one, however, it has to be this one.

We are in a new transition, part 2

The post expresses an aggressive vision of the future---the emergence of mind asset. I predict that the evolution of Web resources (the fundamental of Web evolution) would inevitably lead to the formation of modern mind asset. This emergence could bring so significant impact to our society that it would be comparable to the invention of stocks---a sign of the rise of capitalism. This is a trend the entire IT society must actively be aware. Moreover, it is not just about the future of IT companies, it is about the future of our society.

Second Year Anniversary (1)

The keyword of this blog is "think."

Think is an inalienable right of human beings. One could be poor, one could be weak, one could be ill, one could be laughed and humiliated, and one might be deprived of all of the other rights such as speaking, hearing, reading, writing, or walking. But as long as he breaths, he thinks.

Think is also the most beautiful thing of human being. Through thinking we learn and create. Learning allows us to discover the beauty of the world. Creating then enables us daring to realize beyond what we can see.

Think assigns us humanity.

Thinking Space, The Second Year

Today is the second-year anniversary of Thinking Space. I sincerely thank all the readers who have supported the blog so far.

The number of visits at this blog has grown tremendously from about 8,600 to over 45,000 in the past year. This number does not include readers who read through RSS subscriptions. If we add both of the regular on-site readers and the RSS readers altogether, Thinking Space is reaching 2,000 visits per week and the total number of visits has been over 70,000.

As a normal single-person, part-time blog site without any sponsorship, I am honored by this accomplishment. With neither money nor fame, distinctive thinking is the only gift Thinking Space brings. Thank you for loving it!

Here in a three posts I summarize the accomplishment of this blog during the past year.

Sites I recommend

Good thinking originates from reading high quality materials. The following are the sites/persons that I have particularly learned during the past year. I would like to express my special thanks to them.

1) General:

TED: learned a lot from great speeches.

Read/WriteWeb: a well balanced site mixed with instant news and insightful analysis, I personally like all of its major bloggers such as Marshall Kirkpatrick, Alex Iskold, Sarah Perez, and certainly Richard MacManus, the founder.

TechCrunch: probably the most popular blog on Web technology and Web industry, breaking news and wide coverage.

VentureBeat: leading discussion on cutting-edge technology and business news.

Internet Evolution/ThinkerNet: not for breaking-news readers, however, if one looks for in-depth articles written by true domain experts and field thinkers in their professional areas (in contrast to reading news reports from journalists), this is the site.

2) Specific:

O'Reilly Radar: Tim O'Reilly and others, a site bringing thoughts about the most frontier of World Wide Web.

Alt Search Engines: the best site to broaden the knowledge of Web search, Charles Knight is a true knight on broadcasting Google-unlike Web search tools.

Read/WriteTalk: hearing insightful thoughts spoken by industrial Web evangelists.

Nodalities: watching and hearing insightful thoughts by primarily academic (also with a few industrial) Web evangelists, especially recommending the Talis Talk podcast series and the Semantic Web Gang series moderated by Paul Miller and the "This Week's Semantic Web" series written by Danny Ayers.

Semantic Focus: for some reason James Simmons was too busy to keep on his blogging in the past few months, but this site remains to be a premier source to learn novel thoughts on Semantic Web.

3) Individual:

Tim Berners-Lee: you know the reason to read this site, don't you?

Nicholas Carr: great writer and thinker, sharp, insightful, and often illuminating.

Kingsley Idehen: practical, real, and visionary, demonstrating the way to practice Semantic Web/Linked Data concepts in the real-world business.

Nova Spivack: an example of being a visionary thinker and a pragmatic entrepreneur simultaneously, watching his thoughts and his recommended reading.

Tim Finin: no inspiration? UMBC eBiquity tells what a leading Web scientist thinks and recommends. You will be recharged.

Jason Kolb: thoughtful, in-depth, and great writing, Jason is surely one of my most favorite thinkers.

Allan Cho: compact, new Web-age style brief thinking, but unquestionably insightful.

The Blog Anniversary is coming

About two years ago, at October 1st, 2006, I had my first post at Thinking Space. At that time, I was just thinking of a casual place that might allow me to throw a few random thoughts of my research irregularly. I had not thought to build a site that would one day have consistently hundreds of readers everyday from all over the world (and the number is still growing dramatically). Be honest, it was just a little bit more than a dream for a nobody with no fame, no money, and no any sponsorship at all, and we know that there are thousands of this type of new blog sites created every day!

As what I did at the last year, I will post an anniversary special at the blog anniversary day. It is both of a thank-you note for my readers and a memo for myself. If anybody (actually mainly myself) wants to look for what Thinking Space has discussed and thought before, the anniversary posts are the best place to start searching. They categorize nearly all the posts in the past year and the posts are recorded with a brief summary of content.

Unlike the last year, however, this year's anniversary post will be a mini-series with three installments.

(1) Thank you note, including special thanks to a list of news and blog sites and individual bloggers that have brought me resources of thinking. I would recommend this list of sites and bloggers to all of the Thinking Space readers because they are really good and you can learn much from their writing just as I have learned.

(2) Particular share of three selected posts at Thinking Space, two are the most popular posts voted by the readers like you (based on the visiting status records) and the last one is picked by the author, i.e., me.

(3) Summary of the posts in the past year.

The second-year anniversary post has been scheduled on early morning at October 1st. Thank you and wish it could be a good gift of innovative thoughts for every one of you.

Thinking Space 2007 in 12 months

This post is the highlight of what was on Thinking Space in 2007 month-by-month. I am grateful to all the readers of Thinking Space and wish you merry Christmas and happy new year!

January 28, 2007, Web 2.0 panel on World Economic Forum

How would Web 2.0 and the emerging social networks affect world business? The annual World Economic Forum at Davos organized a panel with five outstanding Web business leaders addressing this issue at the beginning of 2007. The talks, however, showed that the executives from traditional big companies such as Microsoft and NIKE were less alerted to the new technologies than the executives from new-age companies such as YouTube and Flickr. In short, both Bill and Mark were talking in languages other than Web 2.0. By their viewpoints, the Web-2.0 phenomenon was certainly less important than their own imaginary vision towards the future. What web evolution really impacts world business was severely underestimated.

At the end, the speech by Viviane is worth of re-emphasizing. When the Web evolves to be more and more mature, who are going to govern the virtual world? This question may gradually become a severe issue when web evolution goes further. Will there be conflicts between the virtual world governments and the real world governments? I do not think that in 2008 we will immediately see this type of conflicts. But the traditional means of national boards do have started to diminish while the new means of digital boards are forming; these changes are slowly but inevitably.

February 18, 2007, The Two-Year Birthday of AJAX

Few technologies have affected the Web so much as AJAX has done. AJAX is more than a technology; it is a philosophy. What AJAX really does is to decompose Web content into smaller portable pieces that are feasible to be uploaded and updated independently. AJAX prompts the dynamic recomposition of pieces of Web content from varied resources. Hence it significantly improves the reuse of information on the Web.

The prevalence of AJAX causes the fragmentation of the Web. The reverse side of this phenomenon is, however, how we may defragment the small pieces of information and reorganize them from end-users' perspectives. This defragmentation issue is the next critical challenge for Web information management. Twine is an example that has started to address this issue. I expect to see more proposals to solve this defragmentation issue in 2008.

March 23, 2007, Will the Semantic Web fail? Or not?

Whether the Semantic Web is going to succeed is always debatable. There are many supporters of Semantic Web, and there are nearly as many as the opponents as well. Will Semantic Web become true? The answer partially depends on whether the Semantic Web researchers can humbly learn from the success of Web 2.0. The normal public might not welcome Semantic Web if its research is still kept inside the ivory tower. Practices such as Microformat are good examples that the Semantic Web research approaches normal web users. But there are still too few of this type of examples. For instance, will the new W3C RDFa proposal be too complicated again? We don't know yet. Hopefully this time W3C would focus more on simple solutions that are feasible to normal users rather than on sound and complete solutions that the academic researchers favor. In comparison, if our real human society is far less than being perfect in reasoning and inference, why must we have theoretically perfect plans to build a virtual world?

April 18, 2007, New web battle is announced

Google is expanding rapidly. Google had replaced Yahoo being the leading Web search engine. Google has already been the largest site that produces Web-2.0 products. Google is competing against Microsoft to be the leading online document editor. Google is fighting against Facebook to be the leading social network through the OpenSocial initiative. More recently, Google starts another battle against Wikipedia to be the leading online knowledge aggregator by the announcement of Google Knol. Can Google succeed simultaneously in all of these fields? Are Google's plans too ambitious to be successful?

The age of Google is about to pass; this is my prediction after watching all these ambitious plans issued by Google. Google has started losing its momentum on originality. By contrast, Google is now repeating a "successful" path of many traditional big companies, i.e., dominating the market by defeating the opponents not by new achievements on technologies but by its superior money resources. This strategy has been proved successfully in many fields. However, it is not a winning strategy on web industry. The reason is that World Wide Web itself is evolving. When the Web evolves, Web technologies evolves. Any company that stops evolving would be thrown away. The history once happened to Yahoo may happen to Google again in the future. The age of Google will be passed with the over of Web 2.0.

May 8, 2007, Web Search, is Google the ultimate monster?

Google is beatable, but Google is not going to be defeated by another Google-style solution. When I predict that the age of Google is about to pass, I mean new revolution on Web technologies. Google is thinking of itself as the God of World Wide Web; and indeed many Web users accept this interpretation (because we have no other better choices at present). But history has already told us that this type of fake gods like Google could not stay forever. In history, we humans abandoned most of the fake gods as soon as the public education system was prevailed. In similar, this history will repeat itself in the virtual world of the Web. The fake God of the virtual world (Google) will step down when the education on Web machine agents prevails. Hakia would not threaten Google if it continues following the Google strategy by addressing itself to be a more powerful fake God on the Web.

In addition to this short summary, I have a preliminary funding request. I will graduate next year and currently I am looking for an assistant professor position. If I'd get an offer, I would start a new research project on next-generation Web search that is beyond the current Google-style search strategy. In fact, I have already done the project proposal. For any reader, if you are responsible on looking for and funding new research projects that are full of potential in the future, I am far more than happy to discuss my project with you. I can be contacted through yihong.ding@gmail.com. The philosophy underneath my new web search strategy can be read at here.

June 29, 2007, Epistemological extension to ontologies: a key of realizing Semantic Web?

The application of epistemology into Semantic Web is less explored than it should have been. We need ontologies to enhance the collaboration and agreements. We also need epistemologies to emphasize the individuality and privacy. I expect more research on this topic in 2008.

July 31, 2007, What does tagging contribute to the web evolution? | An introduction of web thread

There are many ways to describe web evolution. One unique expression is the transformation from the node-driven web to the tread-driven web. Web thread is a new term proposed by myself. In short, a web thread is a connection that links multiple web nodes to a fixed inbound. I observed that the Web was not only syntactically connected by human-specified links, but also semantically connected by latent threads each of which expresses a fixed meaning. A straightforward evidence of the existence of web threads is Web-2.0 tags. On Web 2.0, resources are automatically mutual-connected when they are specified the same tag by individual human users. When weaving these tags together, we obtain an interconnected network of all web pages.

The existence of web threads is an interesting phenomenon that lacks of insightful research at present. From one side, web threads are part of the implicit web because they are generally latent at this moment. On the other side, by proactively revealing web threads and explicitly weaving them, we might produce more comprehensive social graphs for individual web users. This new concept thus may contribute significantly to the vision of Giant Global Graph. I will publish more research on this concept in 2008. By the way, a broader discussion of web links and web threads can be found at here.

August 24, 2007, Mapping between Web Evolution and Human Growth, A View of Web Evolution, series No. 4

World Wide Web is evolving. But why does the Web evolve and how does it evolve? Few answers have been given. The view of web evolution is the first systematic study in the world that directly addresses the answer to these questions based on a theoretic exploration.

This view of web evolution stands upon the analogical comparison between web evolution and human growth. I argue that the two progresses are not only similar to each other by their common evolutionary patterns, but also literally simulate each other from all the major aspects. At present, the simulation mainly happens in the uni-direction from the real world to the virtual world. In the future, however, we are going to see more evidences of simulation on the reversed direction, i.e. from the virtual world to the real world.

The virtual world represented by the Web is nothing but a reflection of our human society. Due to the limit of web technologies, however, we are not able to completely simulate our society from every aspect into this virtual world. In particular, we are not able to well simulate all the activities of individual humans on the Web. By contrast, we can simulate individuals at a certain level within any specific evolutionary stage. This continuous upgrade of simulation of individuals on the Web represents the main stream of web evolution.

This theory of web evolution has published for half a year and I have received many requests on discussing this vision. I hope this study would bring more attention to the fascinating web evolution research.

September 16, 2007, A Simple Picture of Web Evolution

The simple picture of web evolution expresses a straightforward timeline of web evolution. The Web is evolving from a read-or-write web to a read/write web, and eventually it may become a read/write/request web. The implementation of the "Request" operation would be a fundamental next-step towards the next generation Web.

October 7, 2007, What is Web 2.0? | The Path towards Next Generation, Series No.1

What is the next generation Web? This is a grand question to all Web researchers at this moment. We might see critical breakthrough on answering this question in 2008.

At present, the advance of Web 2.0 has already slowed down. The progress of web evolution has reached another stable quantitative expansion period after the exciting qualitative transition from 1.0 to 2.0. The seed of next transition is growing underground now.

In order to figure out the path towards the next generation Web, we need to know the present and where the present was coming from. In the first post of this series "towards the next generation", I summarized the various definitions of Web 2.0. In the following installments at this series, I will continue discussing my vision of the path towards Web 3.0. I feel sorry about the slow progress of this series. I will try to post this series more frequently in the coming year.

November 23, 2007, Multi-layer Abstractions: World Wide Web or Giant Global Graph or Others

Giant Global Graph is a new concept. Although Tim Berners-Lee proposed this concept intuitively for freely deploying personal social networks onto the Web, my view of the intent of this concept is beyond this intuition. In general, I believe that the proposal of this concept is the first sign of a great transition---the organization of web information is transforming from the publisher-oriented point of view to the viewer-oriented point of view.

The impact of this transformation could be greater than we may imagine. Most importantly, this transformation will show that the Web may automatically re-organize its information system without a human-controlled organization such as W3C or Google. World Wide Web is a self-organizing system. This observation is essential to the understanding of web evolution.

December 3, 2007, Collectivism on the Web

The implementation of collectivism has been the landmark of Web 2.0. But do we know how many types of collectivism we may implement onto the Web? This last selected article at December 2007 summarized a few typical implementations of collectivism on the Web. Some of them (such as collective intelligence) have been well known, while others (such as collective responsibility and collective identity) are less known by the public. I expect to watch more creative implementations of collectivism in 2008.

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.