Mar 4, 2011

Blast From the Past: Immersive Age: One Step Closer

[Originally published on my original blog, Oct 19, 2008]

Over two years ago, I wrote two different pieces about something I called the Immersive Age (here and here ). To summarize what this new age is to me, I’ll try to make it quite simple:

Information Age – living in a world with access to data.
Immersion Age – living within a world of data.

I haven’t brought up this idea in a while in part because there hasn’t been any major progress in the two years since I wrote about it. All the major websites and social networking sites existed, all the same tools of web browsers existed, and the basic functions of the internet existed (ie uploading/downloading media, email, online gaming, blogs, etc). All of these tools have been enhanced through time as both the quality of internet connections, stability in the web browsing experience, and the quantity of websites, giving people more and better options on how to access and use the internet. In the past month, however, a few notable changes have sprung up that are pushing us in a whole new direction. A direction that is one step closer to the Immersive Age.

Ubiquity:

Ubiquity is a new tool being developed for Mozilla‘s Firefox web browser. It is an extension of the web browser that Mozilla’s Labs wanting to “empower the user, enable on-demand user generated mashups, and extend the browser functionality.” It does this by giving users access to a separate group of commands that operate beyond the simple web browsing functions of moving between pages, searching within a page, and any other tools located on that webpage. The commands that can be used are endless as more and more users add to the library of commands available.

I’m including one example below of what Ubiquity does to give you a proper sense of what’s happening:

In the screen shot, you see my blog opened up, and I highlighted “Immersive Age.” Enacting Ubiquity, I entered in the command “Wiki this” which Ubiquity knows to mean “wikipedia the highlighted text.” It displays the results inline, or I could have hit return to send it into a new tab within the browser. There’s a lot more you can do with this tool, so I suggest looking at their website.

What Ubiquity does for the user is make it easier to stay within the browser world and do their work without having to think about finding a certain website (whether that means finding the correct bookmark or remembering the address to it). It is early in its development, and where it goes from here will certainly be exciting. The same program is being built for Thunderbird, the Mozilla email client. More information about that project can be found here.

Chrome
Chrome is new a web browser newly released by Google. There’s a lot of discussion about what Chrome brings to the internet and whether it’s better than Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, etc. I don’t want to add anything to that discussion because it is early in the development of Chrome.

Chrome brings popularity to a different approach of web browsing and the internet in general. The main feature about Chrome that makes a difference is how it handles the different tabs or windows. They’re managed separately as their own memory processes. What this means to the browser is greater stability, which also means people won’t have the same frustrations with their web browser freezing up on them. With the browsing experience able to last longer because of this stability, users will become more immersed into the websites they’re viewing. They will be able to finish more complicated tasks on the web without worry of lost data, and will begin to rely on web applications more than a desktop solution. This will increase in time to the point where we no longer have desktops, only light computers connected to the internet or other networks.

Aurora

Adaptive Path released a concept video of the future of the internet. It’s quite breathtaking to watch the series of videos, and it would bring the idea of the immersive age to fruition if it was fully developed. Watch the series of videos and prepare yourself to be amazed and start dreaming.

More to come later with any future developments that takes us in the direction of the Immersive Age.

Related Posts:

• Are You Transhuman? A New Dimension of What It Means to Be Human
• We Are Now Living Completely In The Immersive Age
• Blast From the Past: Living in the Immersion Age Now
• Immersive Age versus Information Age
• Forget About Facebook, Let’s Move On