Sunday, April 20, 2008

Can technology self-adjust?

My friend, Jon, recently sent me an article from The Telegraph on websites that "grow and develop", just as humans due, raising the question of whether or not technology can abide by the laws of Darwinism. Can websites be programmed so the ones that are most adaptive to change survive, and those that are rigid and "set in their ways" perish? This takes the idea of user-generated content to a whole new level.

Human creativity, collectively, is able to alter technology over a number of iterations with these websites. The colors, fonts, and usability changes as the technology collect information by users of what they found appealing or unappealing, the links they clicked (or didn't click) on. Think of what this could do for blogs or mass media information sources? Bloggers and reporters are constantly guessing what type of content would be most interesting and provocative to readers. Imagine if the readers could play direct hand in the alterations?!

This technology is in its early stages, though it's easy to imagine all the different paths this type of innovation could create for us, or rather the paths we would be able to create for ourselves. What technology could human creativity synthesize using the same process that nature has followed for so many centuries? This invention could be the very height of biomimicry. Learn more at about the project and Matthew Hockenberry, the director of the Creative Synthesis Collaborative at www.creativesynthesis.net.

2 comments:

swissfondue said...

Would you want the design and content of your website to be modified automatically by a script or your readers?

Christa said...

Not sure. Maybe. I guess it would depend on my goal for the blog. If it was to put my own ideas out there, then I'd want to control the content and design. If it was to create a self-sustaining community or get ideas from the field of the industry I work in, then self-adjusting technology might be the right way to go.