Grid

My former schoolmate Robin created a nifty Flash movie that attempts to predict the next 10 years of media history. It's been Slashdotted, Scobled, and Kottke-ed, so I figured I'd try to say something unique about it.

I think the notion of data privacy will either reshape the "desktop metaphor" or become one of the most important uses of metadata. Modern operating systems already have a notion of "permissions", but setting up file permissions can be very tricky. There needs to be a better interface for telling the computer how certain pieces of data should be shared. AOL Instant Messenger already has a good start ("Allow all users, allow all users except these, block all users except these..."), but we're still waiting for a breakthrough.

It's not hard to envision a world where people have fast broadband connections (upstream AND downstream), using computers that have operating systems that can easily share data. The interface would be streamlined to allow instant publishing. ("Computer, set the privacy level of this file to 'world-readable'. Computer, set the privacy level of this file to 'wiki'.") Everybody would be a media producer, just like in "epic".

The question would then become, do you really want to hear everybody's opinion? (And would conservative think tanks still insist that the grid has a liberal bias?)