New technologies follow a pattern. They start by imitating older technologies before they evolve to their true forms. The first automobiles looked like horseless carriages. It wasn't until the Vintage Era of the 1920s that cars evolved to a form that we'd recognize today with features like front-engines, enclosed cabs, and electric starters. Televisions started off copying radios -- they looked more like an armoire with a small screen stuck on the front.
In the process of working on my latest piece of research, it became clear that the Web has followed a similar pattern. Early sites imitated a much older medium: paper. And even though "web page" still dominates our thinking, online experiences have begun to evolve away from the page-based metaphor. In the next 5 years the evolution of online experiences toward their true form is about to take off at a much faster rate than in the previous 5 years.
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