The internet is the greatest tool mankind has ever invented. Although it is as great as it is, its potential reaches far beyond its current utilization, and even beyond the imagination of the great majority of people. The internet as I imagine it is a completely customized experience, designed to tailor completely to the uniqueness of each individual who uses it. One of the ‘problems’ of the internet as it is is that it is completely standardized across the globe, or at least country. Search engines, and everything else, sort everything according to (inter)national trends. The results of what comes up in your internet experience should be customized to your own personal dispositions and wants. This should be done through complex personal and interpersonal feedback. There would be a database of your search trends, which would further be classified according to a rating system with which you would have the option for giving ratings to everything. Everything on the internet would be classified through certain categories, and then be rated by the individuals who utilized it, and those ratings would be sorted according to the preferences and rating trends of the individuals who rated them. So what you were confronted with on the internet would be based on the trends of what you look for as well as how you rate things, showing you things based on what other people who have similar interests and have similar ratings have also rated good. This would allow you to find more and more material that would be of interest to you, and all the while you would continue to rate things, which would further customize your experience.
There would also be an encouragement to utilize an easy ability for individuals to post their own material. Everything would be put into this database, and so your material would be rated and sorted through in the same way as everything else. There would, then, be two basic rating systems. One would be the way that you rated everything in your internet experience, and the other would be the way others rated you in their internet experience. The preferences of the indiduals who rated you would be sorted through, and so you would have different ratings based on different type of people who had different preferences. This would customize the way in which your material is found, making it easier for people who tend to like the sort of material you are posting to find. The database, or individuals monitoring it, would track overall trends in personality types, and come up with meaningful classifications of personality types/preferences, and note the relationships between different characteristics. Individuals using this system would meet other people in a variety of environments. There would be the basic ‘blog’ like setup, where one individual basically make his/her voice heard, and other people watch/read and leave their thoughts. There would be the ‘forum’ type of setup, where individuals all interact with eachother in regards to topics of shared interest. There would also be the ‘social networking’ aspect, which would be greatly improved through this system. All these different methods of communication would be distinct, yet related.
This ‘database’ I’m speaking of would run through all the different modes of interaction. Individuals who enjoy things you post in a blog-like setup may want to interact with you in a more interactive forum setup. Individuals who you vibe with in a forum setup may be compatible in such a way that it would be appropriate to connect in a more casual social networking setup. It would work in the reverse as well, of course. Individuals who you form casual and somewhat shallow relationships with in the social networking arena may want to interact with you more in-depth, and truly understand who you are as an individual. This relationship would now go into the more in-depth forum and blogging interfaces. Now you could potentially have multiple ‘e-identities,’ each of which would be a basically distinct personality. What is meant here is basically when you have more than one ‘part’ of who you are, that aren’t exactly the same. Say you are very interested in philosophy, and also very interested in sports. These are not exactly overlapping, and so likely these would split into two different e-identities, each of which would group various aspects of who you are and your internet trends and sort them into your different identities in the way that best describes the different identities. Each of your e-identities would be sorted into the larger database, and work its way into the overall seams of the internet as part of whatever larger categories are appropriate. Based on a similar ‘rating’ system, it would then keep track of the different individuals who you got along with best through whatever medium it was that worked best, and whatever e-identity you were using. It would notice the commonalities in terms of what larger personality categories they were a part of, as well as their search and rating trends. The internet would then facilitate further interactions with people who were of similar personality categories that have been found to be compatible, and you would interact through whatever medium was most appropriate.
Another aspect of this, that I alluded to earlier, would be the aspect of locality. Internet experience, particularly the individuals you interact with, would tend towards locality. It would be designed so that it would generally be possible to actually meet the people you interact with. This all depends on personal preferences, of course. You would filter your preferences through things such as locality vs. overall compatibility. Whether or not you were interested in actually meeting certain types of people and so forth. Also, you would determine what types of people, or what specific people, you wanted to share all of the various things you do online with. So people would only have access to whatever you wanted them to see, and that would be entirely determined by your preferences. This would be further aided by the concept of e-identities. Your various identities would be strengthened and clarified through your various interactions and the types of information you chose to share with the people met through the various identities. This would also maximize the benefit of your various relationships, because only compatible information would be shared, unless it was with an individual who you chose to share a broader range of information.