Amy Gahran contends that we seem to have slipped into a new era in the past few years: The Information Age has started evolving into the Connection Age. . .
Gahran points out that three of the emerging and popular technologies today -- Wikis, Podcasts and Feeds, have a common thread: Connection.
Wikis, she feels, mirror human minds and communities. Wikis show (or allow to build) relationships between ideas/information, thus allowing new ideas and understanding to evolve from combinations of existing ones. The real action in a Wiki is not information itself, but making connections between information.
Feeds, Gahran points out, are about interconnected interests. You subscribe to a blog's feed because you are interested in what the author of the blog has to say. Feeds she says allow direct, immediate connections in real time between people who publish online and their audiences.
Podcasts, Gahran says, are about a more human kind of connection -- the sound of the human voice, and other kinds of human expression through sound. Podcasts allow us to "see sounds" and that provide us with rich information and context.
Gahran feels that we are moving into an era where increasingly tools and ideas that help us make connections will matter more than those which simply manage information.
Read her complete post: Connection Age: Transcending the Information Age.
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