Personal Web
Last week, an email landed in my inbox with an article Bye bye Evernote — it was great while it lasted. If you have never heard about Evernote, it is an app for taking and capturing notes and taking them wherever you are, online or offline. It is similar to OneNote from Microsoft, Notion or Notes by Apple.
All these apps are supposed to capture various types of content - text, documents, images, organize them, create tasks. It’s something between memory backup and a personal assistant.
The keyword here is the word 'personal'.
Sometime between 1960 and 1980 the personal computer was created and thanks to IBM, Microsoft and Apple started something for the history books. It was an answer to the mainframe, a big, heavy piece of machinery in a secluded room where only a few chosen people could go. The PC provided the same power to the masses. The true power came when all these personal computers connected to the Internet. Suddenly, everyone could access everything (so to speak).
Your Personal Computer had your personal files and you could personalize your desktop to find them easier. Once connected to the Internet, you found websites with information which was interesting to you. You found these websites through search engines but even the most advanced like Google and Bing despite their claims deliver nothing which would be described as personal.
Over the years, many companies tried to copy and replicate the Internet on your computer. Many companies (like the above-mentioned Evernote) tried to help you to capture information and create an archive which you could carry with you. All that was captured in a moment.
One problem: without much context, the information was often moved into an archive which was forgotten as soon as the content was moved there, never to be found again.
What happened is that the highly distributed and decentralized Internet became the mainframe, where nothing is really personal. Your personal device keeps storing your past, which you rarely look at. The search engine is returning anything but personal results. Any advertisement you see has no relevance to what you are looking for. Alexa with Siri drives you insane with irrelevant suggestions. Your social network of choice is here to make you angry and keep you there to be exposed to more advertising. That’s what it means to keep you 'engaged'.
Somehow, along the way, we forgot what the word 'personal' meant.
Technology has advanced again and we have now the chance to change this. We have enough computing power, network speed and capable end devices to work on the new Internet – the Personal Internet. This is the place where you can truly discover new things, where you interact with your personal assistant, which does things on your behalf to make your life easier. The place which feels like your personal space, not the boring wasteland of mass averageness. The time for this pattern to emerge is here.