Dublin Web Summit captures past, present, and future under one roof
The first communication over what we would recognise as the internet was made on Oct 29, 1969, at 10.30pm in room 3420 in UCLA, and the man responsible, Leonard Kleinrock, told the Web Summit that, in the near future, chips in our skin and eyes will be communicating with the very rooms that we walk into.
Prof Kleinrock described the internet as “a machine to generate surprises”. He said that no one could have predicted the uses that connecting humans would be put to, but the idea of the connection was as old as the 1908, when Nicola Tesla had predicted it.
Although the world is only getting accustomed to the instant communication of the global village, Facebook believes we have already entered into a new revolution with the rise of the mobile web.
Facebook’s vice president for Europe, Nicola Mendelsohn, said that the world is experiencing a massive cultural shift.
“The move to mobile is the biggest cultural shift since the introduction of TV in the 1960s,” she said.
Ms Mendelsohn said that the shift will have a similar impact on society as when Henry Ford perfected the Model T. While Mr Ford just built a car, it was that car which led to the development of suburbs and which shapes the way we live our live now.
Ms Mendelsohn believes the rise of mobile connected devices will have a similar revolutionary effect.
However, the revolution that was on every developers lips was the arrival of Google Glass.
Aaron Levie, the founder of Box — a collaboration tool for businesses — said that, in five years, we will not be talking about mobiles any more, because everything will be Google Glass.
Google vice president Mark Brittin said he was a big fan of Google Glass and that the product would help bring the remaining billion people on to the internet.
“The user experience is totally taken out of the hands of the user,” he said. “This is what will help it get the remaining billion people on to the net.”
While Google was concentrating on the future, Twitter was definitely focusing on the now. The company showed off a mind-boggling array of data that users reveal through their tweets.
Even without looking at what people are saying, but merely the volume of tweets, the company can tell what people are viewing on television.
Twitter’s Ireland managing director, Stephen McIntyre, said that conversations are predictable. Twitter’s data mining has revealed that a group of people watching the same film in different countries will tweet in the exact same patterns as the narrative arc is played out.
The big-name speaker on the day was professional skateboarder Tony Hawk who has managed to use social media to help promote his brand.
In recent years, he has become known for his video game franchise. He said the toughest thing was watching a character modelled on himself be repeatedly killed.
“It’s tough watching yourself fall, watching your character blow out his knee repeatedly, that’s the one I can’t bring myself to look at,” he said.
Despite all the talk of the future of tech and the ubiquity of the web one of the failings of the Web Summit was that the wifi in the venue didn’t work.
A spokesperson for the Dublin Web Summit said: “The RDS provides the internet service for the Web Summit and assured the organisers a quality service would be provided.”
