Internet Hierarchy of Needs elaborated, Part 5
Summary: This post is the final installment in the Internet Hierarchy of Needs series. You can find the original Internet Hierarchy of Needs post here, and you can also follow the discussion thus far: Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, and Level 4.
Level 5: Actualization
The Web becomes a frictionless tool for personal growth and fulfillment
For the past week, we’ve been progressing inexorably towards realizing the full potential of the Internet by asking the same question over and over: “Once we’ve done X, what’s next?”
- Once we’ve connected computers to each other, we can connect documents to each other.
- Once we’ve connected documents to each other, we can extrapolate meaning from the connections.
- Once we’ve extrapolated meaning from the connections, we can extrapolate meaning from the data.
- And now, Level 5: once we’ve extrapolated meaning from the data, the Web can become actualized, and, in doing so, fulfill its role as a tool for our self-actualization.
Surely none of you were fooled into thinking the grandest potential for the Web had been realized when Zombies invaded Facebook. The grandest potential for the Web comes, ironically, when we cease to appreciate it for itself.
Think about email for a minute. When email was first invented, the novelty factor alone imbued messages with special importance. “I’ve got an email,” you’d think proudly. What you were really thinking was, “Look at me using this cutting-edge technology. Aren’t I clever?”
That novelty factor is why early-stage technological developments have such silly applications. We’re so excited about the technology itself, we don’t care what it can do. Zombies? Check. Paying $1 for a pixelated ‘gift’? Check. At this stage of the game, the inherent value of these valueless things comes from the excitement of the platform on which they’re delivered.
Now think about email today. Unless you’re an email marketer, you probably don’t think about it. You use it, continually; you check it at home and at work and remotely and from your phone; its integration as a tool in your life is complete. Like your cell phone. Like your old-fashioned landline.
These communication tools have fulfilled their purpose as mechanisms to enable society to evolve. Nobody thinks you’re special anymore because you got a message by email—if the message itself isn’t interesting, we’re not interested.
This is what Level 5 of the Internet Hierarchy is about: the technology ceases to matter, and our focus returns to the true meaning of what we’re doing.
We begin to use the Internet to improve early disease detection and rapid disaster response. We use it to combat climate change. We use it to map the human genome.
The more mundane uses of it don’t go away, of course, and this is not to say that any Internet use not aimed at saving the world has to go. The shift here is from technology-for-the-sake-of-technology and towards the Internet as a tool for mankind.
To paraphrase my recent Search Insider post, the Web is meant to serve us, not the other way around.
Is this your experience of the Internet? Or do you think we maxed out at Vampires? I’m keen to hear your ideas.
January 18th, 2008 at 7:31 am
Terrific series Kalia. I had a lot of trouble for a while with your level five because it didn’t comfortably map on to what I see going on on the internet. But then I realised that this level is for those who choose to be there. A kind of refuge from the mayhem, a place where they can find goodness despite the appalling rubbish that clogs their digital world.
I’ll be mulling on this for a while to come.
Thanks for starting the debate.