May 25th, 2009



The "Real-Time Everything" Dilemma

Larry Page says web users love “real-time” information.  Television brainiacs see a future of all on-demand all the time. Even data mining is becoming more real-time.

People love new. New toys, new trends, new methods, new clothes. And the shift to a more real-time web plays into this well – it allows us to constantly quench our desire for “what’s new”.

Kevin Kelleher posits that the advantage of the real-time web is its ability to enable discovery as opposed to results. I agree – guided discovery is a totally awesome part of real-time applications. I worry though, that this constant reinforcement of the new marginalizes even further the opportunity to discover anything that’s *not* new.

Historical discovery was hard enough before the real-time web. When flipping through channels on television, I would stumble on old shows by chance and watch them. Now with all on-demand content consumption, I only watch what I want. I would read the encyclopedia yearbooks in my living room to learn about years before my time, though now, I barely touch websites that don’t add new content every single day.

Old content on the web gets buried WAY fast. Sure, chronological archiving helps, but the trend toward real-time content delivery has made it possible to avoid old content almost completely – one doesn’t stumble upon dated stuff in the same way.

I hope that the idea of discovery on the web doesn’t become synonymous with new, as often some of the most satisfying and interesting finds are the ones you missed the first time around.

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