I first imagined minds that might augment our own some three decades ago.
Yes, I really am that old, and I have the grey hair to prove it.
So why, three decades later, is it finally the right time for a mind for all humanity?
Why now?
Here are three reasons why the time is ripe for Open Web Mind... and only two of them have anything to do with AI.
Reason #1: Search is dead
Do your remember the time when, if you wanted to know something, you used Google search?
I mean, you might not have actually typed the URL google.com, you might have just tapped a few words into your browser, but I’m willing to bet that your browser used Google search.
And sure, you might have switched your default search engine to, say, Startpage, or you might have searched for a video on YouTube, or you might have searched for a message in Gmail... oh, no, hang on, Gmail is Google, and YouTube is Google, and Startpage, well, that too uses Google search.
I’m not going to quote a percentage, because it’s hard to know how to measure these things, but it’s safe to say that Google search accounts for most of our attempts to access information.
It’s quite the monopoly.
Google might not know it yet, but it’s a monopoly that’s been broken.
I do still use Google search occasionally, when I’m looking for a single, specific source on the web, but when I’m after an overview supported by multiple, disparate sources, I use AI.
I might be in the minority right now, but the Large Language Models are so much better than Google search for most purposes that it seems inevitable that everyone will make the switch sooner or later.
Indeed, it seems inevitable that Google, too, will make the switch, and serve AI responses over search results for most queries.
Maybe Google will survive this transition.
Maybe AI upstarts will steal some of Google’s market share.
Regardless, we’re in for a period of serious disruption in the way we access information.
Here’s the thing with disruption: the outcome isn’t always what we think it’ll be.
We may think that LLMs will supplant search, and that’ll be that.
But in a period of serious disruption, everything’s up in the air.
When, for the first time in decades, we’re all experimenting with new ways to access information, it might not be AI alone that gains ground, it might be something else, too, something completely different, something entirely unexpected.
Something like Open Web Mind.
Reason #2: Smash the system
Google’s search monopoly might be broken by AI, but Big Tech’s control over our access to information won’t be.
The promise of the web was that anyone would be able to publish anything.
And that of all the things published on the web, everyone would be able to access everything.
That promise has been fulfilled, more or less.
Despite the best efforts of governments around the world to lock down the web – not just in places like China, but in places like Canada, too – anyone can publish anything, and everyone can access everything, from most places, for the most part.
The trouble is, there’s a crucial element that’s missing from that promise.
What does it matter that anyone can publish anything if no one comes across it?
What does it matter that everyone can access everything if no one knows it’s there?
The reality is that a small number of Big Tech players have almost total control over what we come across on the web: Google, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, Anthropic, OpenAI, X.
If Big Tech doesn’t surface it, we don’t see it.
AI doesn’t change this.
It doesn’t matter whether Big Tech uses an old-fashioned search algorithm or a new-fangled AI transformer, they still control what we come across on the web.
For a long time, we’ve put up with their dominance, because, well, Google search is so good, and you have to be on Facebook, and Instagram’s photos keep you scrolling, and YouTube’s videos keep you clicking.
But something’s changing.
We’re not looking likely to put up with Big Tech’s dominance for much longer.
We’ve always known that these corporations exist to make money. That’s what corporations are, after all, entities that exist to make money.
We’ve long understood that this means that Google prioritizes paid ads over true search results, that Meta prioritizes paid ads over true personal connections, that all these technologies prioritize time on platform over what’s meaningful, what’s sober, what’s true.
And we’re slowly realizing that Big Tech often implements not only what makes them money, but also what serves them politically, whether that means submitting to the whims of the FBI, the CCP or their own employees.
But there are signs that we’ve finally had enough of this nonsense.
If the promise of the web is truly to be fulfilled, then it can’t be Big Tech that controls what we come across on the web.
It has to be us.
And when I say us, I mean each of us, individually.
Just as each and every one of us can publish whatever we like on the web and access whatever we like on the web, each and every one of us must control how we explore the web, how we connect on the web, how we think on the web.
And when I say us, I also mean all of us, collectively.
We must be the ones to decide what rises to our collective consciousness.
Smash the system.
It’s time to take back control of what we come across on the web.
It’s time to go back to thinking for ourselves.
It’s time for Open Web Mind.
Reason #3: Seeing is believing
There’s one more reason why the time is ripe for Open Web Mind.
You’re going to laugh when I say what I’m about to say, because people have been predicting that VR and AR are about to have their moment for a very, very long time, but, well, I predict that Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality are about to have their moment.
If you haven’t taken a look at the latest goggles or glasses, if the last you heard about VR and AR is that the devices are too heavy, the rendering too laggy, the resolution too low and the experience nauseating, then you’re in for a shock when you take another look.
After decades of over-promising and under-delivering, VR and AR now work.
That’s not to say that everyone’s going to be walking around in goggles or glasses any time soon. The adoption of these technologies has always been excruciatingly slow. Pulling a phone from your pocket is a trivial move; putting on goggles or glasses is not, and never will be.
But here’s the thing with technologies whose adoption is excruciatingly slow. For decade after decade, they’re nowhere. Then you wake up one morning and they’re everywhere.
And here’s the thing with VR and AR.
They demand visual.
The web was originally entirely language-based. Images weren’t introduced into HTML until 1995, several years after Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first specification in 1990.
Search was originally entirely language-based. Google didn’t introduce image searches until 2001, prompted by Jennifer Lopez’s green Versace dress, again, several years after WebCrawler launched the first true search engine in 1994.
Voice assistants like Siri and Alexa are entirely language-based. You talk to them in the English language, and they talk to you in the English language.
Even LLMs, the lastest in AI, are entirely language-based. Sure, you can generate impressive images with AI, but the most common use cases for AI are linguistic.
Language won’t cut it in VR and AR.
Goggles and glasses can certainly render text before your eyes, or pipe speech into your ears, but that’s not what VR and AR are all about.
VR and AR demand visual.
That creates an opening for a way to access information on goggles and glasses that’s not language-based, not text, not chat.
It creates an opening for a technology that’s inherently visual.
It creates an opening for Open Web Mind.
