DAVID GELERNTER

02.01.13

6:30 AM

THE END OF THE

WEB, SEARCH,
AND COMPUTER
AS WE KNOW IT

Illustration: Ross Patton/Wired

PEOPLE ASK WHAT

the next

web will be like, but there

wont be a next web.
The space-based web we
currently have will gradually
be replaced by a time-based
worldstream. Its already
happening, and it all began
with the lifestream, a
phenomenon that I (with Eric
Freeman) predicted in the

1990s and shared in the pages

of Wired almost exactly 16
years ago.
This lifestream a
heterogeneous, contentsearchable, real-time
messaging stream arrived
in the form of blog posts and
RSS feeds, Twitter and other
chatstreams, and Facebook
walls and timelines. Its
structure represented a shift
beyond the flatland known
as the desktop (where our
interfaces ignored the
temporal dimension)
towards streams, which flow
and can therefore serve as a
concrete representation of
time.
Its a bit like moving from a
desktop to a magic diary:

BUSINESS

Picture a diary whose pages

The End
of automatically,
the Web, Search,tracking
and Computer as We Know It
turn

CULTURE

DESIGN

GEAR

your life moment to moment

Until you touch it, and
then, the page-turning stops.
The diary becomes a sort of
reference book: a complete
and searchable guide to your
life. Put it down, and the
pages start turning again.
Today, this diary-like
structure is supplanting the
spatial one as the dominant
paradigm of the cybersphere:

SCIENCE

SECURITY

SUBSCRIBE
TRANSPORTATION

All the information on the

internet will soon be a timebased structure. In the world
of bits, space-based
structures are static. Timebased structures are

FOOD

Italians Compare the

Arrival of Starbucks to the
Apocalypse
6 HOURS

dynamic, always flowing

like time itself.

NET NEUTRALITY

The FCC Wants to Make

Cord-Cutting As Painless
As Possible

The web will be history.

8 HOURS

METAPHORS HAVE A
PROFOUND EFFECT
ON COMPUTING
Until
now,
the

DAVID
GELERNTER

LATEST NEWS

web
has
been

ABOUT

David Gelernter is a professor

of computer science at Yale
University and chief scientist
at Lifestreams.com. His books
include Mirror Worlds,
Machine Beauty, and the
forthcoming Other Side of the
Mind. A former member of the
National Endowment for the
Arts governing board,
Gelernter is also a painter; his
works are currently on show at
Yeshiva University Gallery in
Manhattan.

space-based, like a magazine

stand; we use spatial terms
such as second from the top
on the far left to identify a

particular magazine. A diary,

on the other hand, is timebased: One dimension of
space has been borrowed to
represent time, so we use
temporal terms like
Thursdays entry or
everything from last spring
to identify entries.
Time as a metaphor may
seem obvious now. Especially
because its natural for us to
see our lives as stories,
organized by time.
Yet it took us more than 20
years in computing to get
here. The field has finally
moved from conserving
resources ingeniously to
squandering them creatively.
In this new environment, we
can focus on the best way
instead of the cheapest, most
conservative way for the
internet to work.
And today, the most
important function of the
internet is to deliver the
latest information, to tell us
whats happening right now.
Thats why so many timebased structures have
emerged in the cybersphere:
to satisfy the need for the
newest data. Whether tweet
or timeline, all are time-

ordered streams designed to

tell you whats new.
Of course, we can still browse
or search into the past: Time
moves forwards and
backwards in the
cybersphere. Any
information object can be
added at now, and flows
steadily backwards like a
twig dropped in a brook
into the past. You can drop
files, messages, and
conventional websites (those
will appear as static, single
elements) into the stream,
which acts as a contentsearchable cloud file system.
But what happens if we
merge all those blogs, feeds,
chatstreams, and so forth?
By adding together every
timestream on the net
including the private
lifestreams that are just
beginning to emerge into a
single flood of data, we get
the worldstream: a way to
picture the cybersphere as a
whole.
No one can see the whole
worldstream, because much
of the information flowing
through it is private. But
everyone can see part of it.

Imagine an old-fashioned
well with a bucket on a rope,
with the bucket plunging
deeper and deeper into the
well. This well of time is
infinitely deep, so the bucket
will plunge forever and the
rope is always as long as it
needs to be, so there will
always be more rope to
unwind. (The infinite
scrolling we now experience
on many timestreamed
websites is merely the rope
unwinding.) The bucket
represents the head or start
of the worldstream, the
oldest data object. The ropeaxle represents now, and the
rope (plunging deeper and
deeper into the past) is the
stream itself.
Instead of todays static web,
information will flow
constantly and steadily
through the worldstream
into the past. So what does it
all mean?

STREAMS
COMPLETELY
CHANGE THE
SEARCH GAME
Todays operating systems
and browsers and search
models become obsolete,
because people no longer
want to be connected to
computers or sites (they
probably never did).
What people really want is to
tune in to information. Since
many millions of separate
lifestreams will exist in the
cybersphere soon, our basic
software will be the stream-

browser: like todays

browsers, but designed to
add, subtract, and navigate
streams.
Searching content in a time
stream is a matter of stream
algebra, which is easier than
the algebra of space-based
structures like todays web.
Add two timestreams and get
a third (simply merge the AP
news feed and my friend
Freemans blog streams into
time-order); and content
search is a matter of stream
subtraction (simply subtract

all entries that dont mention

cranberries to yield all the
entries that do). The simple,
practical features of stream
algebra have one huge
benefit: giving us made-toorder information.

Every news source is a

lifestream.
Stream-browsers will help us
tune in to the information we
want by implementing a type
of custom-coffee blender:
Were offered thousands of
different stream flavors,
we choose the flavors we
want, and the blender mixes
our streams to order.

Every sites content is

liberated from the confines
of space.
It becomes part of a universal
timestream. Instead of
relying on Amazon the site to
notify me if theres a new
Cynthia Ozick book or new
books on the city of Florence,
I can blend together several
booksellers lifestreams and
then apply my search since
stream algebra allows any
streams to be added (new
and used books) and content
(Florence, Ozick) to be
subtracted.

E-commerce changes
drastically.
We shouldnt have to work to
find whats new, yet the way
the web is currently
architected its no different
logically than having to visit
a thousand separate physical
shops. The time-based
worldstream lets us sit back
instead and watch a single,
customized fashion show
across sites.

Worldstreams thus let us

blend and tune our
information any way we like:
My preferred Yale football
news, book updates, and
shopping recommendations
are interspersed with all my
email, other messages, posts,
documents, calendar notes,
and so forth. Think these
features already exist in an
app somewhere? They dont.
They cant, not until the
millions of different streams

each telling their own stories

share the same interface for
the stream browser to draw
on.
Does this sort of precise
control limit the
serendipitous nature of the
web? In a way, yes. But its
about time: Bring me what I
want is almost always more
useful than Let me rummage
around and see what I can
find. No matter how fast it
seems, most search is a
waste of time. In a way, we
are using time (i.e., the timebased structure) to gain
time.
Instead of doing an endless
series of separate searches,
we tune the knobs on our
stream-browser to
continuously feed us just the
information we need.
This future doesnt just kill
the operating system,
browser, and search as we
know it it changes the
meaning of computer as we
know it, too. Whether large
or small (e.g., a smartphone),
a computers main function
in the near future will be
tuning in to as a car radio
tunes in a broadcast station
the constantly flowing

global cyberflow. We wont care

much about the computer devices
themselves since well be more focused
on the world of information and our
lives as attached to it.

Finally, the web soon to

become the cybersphere
will no longer resemble a
chaotic cobweb. Its already
started to happen. Instead,
billions of users will spin their own tales,
which will merge seamlessly into an
ongoing, endless narrative: the earth
telling its own story.

Editor: Sonal Chokshi

@smc90

UPDATE from author (posted

14 February 2013):
Given the various reactions
to this piece, Id like to point
out that while metaphors
help clarify a far-future

vision, software helps build

towards that vision now.
How should we arrange all
the stuff on the internet?
Conventional solution: use
links to form a web. Users
follow links from one
information-object to related
ones. Unconventional
alternative: use narrative
streams (individually,
lifestreams; blended
together, the
worldstream). Users follow
time-ordered sequences from
one info-object to the next,
and these streams flow: their
tails lengthen constantly as
new information
arrives. Which suggests an
unconventional GUI, using
virtual 3D: objects flow
towards you out of the future
and away from you into the
past. Weve actually *built* a
first draft of this future:
prototype software that
makes the vision concrete.
Go to lifestreams.com to
request an invite. There,
youll see a narrative stream
made of only five sources
(Twitter, Facebook, mail,
RSS, memos). Eventually
there will be billions of
sources: probably 100 or so
right on your control panel

that track people,

institutions, blogs, photostreams, businesses. Put
these billions of streams
together and you get the
worldstream.
Its wonderful that
computing today is full of
non-academics; wonderful
that my piece on Wired has
more influence than any
journal article I might write.
But no matter who or where
you are, the same powerful
processes drive this field: We
see big visions, then use
existing technology to build
software that takes little
steps forward. Ive made
correct predictions in my
time (the cloud, Carriero and
Gelernter 85; the web etc.,
Mirror Worlds, 91; blogs,
chat-streams, and others,
Lifestreams: Bigger than
Elvis, 1995) and so I can
tell you that being right is
worth exactly $0.0. But it
moves the field forward; and
its fun!

#BUSINESS #CHANGING INTERFACES

#DESIGN #FACEBOOK #GOOGLE
#OH WEB WE WEAVE #SEARCH
#SOCIAL NETWORKING
#THE FUTURE NOW #THE FUTURE OF...

#THEN & NOW #TWITTER

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