Web inventor: Online life will produce more creative children

Web inventor: Online life will produce more creative children

BERNERS-LEE: Connecting everyone (on the Net) to everyone (on the Net) has made the world a smaller place by breaking down geographical barriers. It has not, however, enabled everyone to work with everyone else!

For instance, the Net does not change the number of hours in the day or the number of things you can keep in your head. So an individual person has the same amount of time and energy -- but more interesting choices about how to spend it. I hope we will use the Net to cross barriers and connect cultures.

CNN: What will surprise us about the future evolution of the Internet?

BERNERS-LEE: The creativity of our children. In many ways, people growing up with the Web and now the Semantic Web take the power at their fingertips for granted. The people who designed the tools that make the Net run had their own ideas for the future. I look forward to seeing what the next generation does with these tools that we could not have foreseen. ...

More creative, more connected children. Does access to information have an effect on the creativity of children? Does having more information increase the chances that someone can do more with that information? What is the effect of connection on creativity?

Perhaps it is not more creativity we need but the ability for more people to connect and communicate to realize joint creative visions. Perhaps the focus on individual creativity will evolve into group/connected creativity made possible by the "smaller" world created by the Net.

What is it that causes people to create? From my own experience, feedback from community sites like flickr is what inspires me to be more creative - to make the time and effort to write a blog entry or publish a photograph. I am more likely to take photos similar to those with the most comments and views. Tracking how many people read my blog makes me want to keep it fresh so that they'll return. What effect will that have on our children? Will it teach them to produce more or to produce better quality? What is the feedback they will get? How will they internalize it?