Discussion: The original web was about information. Web 2.0 was about making it social. The next huge transformation of the web, enabled almost entirely by the intimacy and ever-presence of mobile devices and AI-agents, may be toward personalization – the Personal Web. Everybody talks about “big data”, but its most powerful potential will be to focus the broadest capacity of the Internet down to serving individual needs, hopes and dreams. Many pundits predict that very soon humans won’t even look for direct connections to the Internet – that each of us will have squadrons of AI-agents surfing, harvesting, creating and acting there for us.
523 Inspiration: The massive personalization potentials of the Personal Web will be realized with mobile devices acting as mediators between the Internet, social networks, a personal cloud, communications systems, and the affordances of the everyday world. It will be the first universal engine for learner-centred education.
The potential of the personal web lies in that it can make learning learner-centred. Rather than having everyone follow a set curriculum and learning pathway, this could adapt learning to an individual’s actual interests, needs, goals and pace. I do think this could also have limitations, however, if all it does is reinforce what the learner already knows and likes. It will be important to ensure that personalization expands our learning, challenges us, and allows us to develop our learning rather than just create an “echo chamber”.