The World in 2030

The World in 2030 71
is an RFID chip), shop doorways will recognise returning
customers and football fans will carry tickets which identify
which team they are supporting and whereabouts they are
in the stadium. Leaky taps in our buildings will call the
plumber themselves and energy-consuming devices will shut
themselves down when they sense they are not required.
There will be massive privacy issues when we are all
permanently connected, along with our possessions and
the environment around us. New laws will be required to
protect our rights and new ways of enforcing such legislation
will be necessary; but despite these concerns, we are
rushing headlong into a fully connected, ‘always on, always
connected, always and everywhere’ future.
This ‘permanently connected’ environment is stimulating
new ways of human interaction as the web itself becomes
more powerful. Recently a slew of new technologies known
under the umbrella term ‘Web 2.0’ 135 brought significantly
enhanced levels of functionality to web communication and
processing (and allowed software applications such as word
processing and spreadsheets to be used as an inherent part
of the web rather than as stand-alone software on individual
computers). And, as the web becomes ever more capable,
humans are finding new ways to exploit its potential and
collaborate in new ways.
One of the most interesting of these new developments
– and one that will scale up easily as web capability increases –
is the emergence of so-called ‘Wiki communities’. 136 Named
after the free, user-built online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, 137
Wiki communities use Wikipedia-style collaborative spaces