As Social computing takes off, we will find an increasing number of internet users posting information in all possible mediums: text, images, video or a combination of the same. Content on the 'net is supposed to be doubling every three months and rapidly accelerating. At the current rate of growth, it is expected to double every 72 hours by 2010, as some have predicted. I beg to differ from this.
Here is what I beleive may happen - All the Information that mankind has collected as on date, will be on the net between 2010-2012 timeframe. The same will get scrubbed over the next few years and get converted to Knowledge in the 2015-18 time frame. Knowledge, in this context, implies, Information that is checked for trueness, categorized and indexed and is validated. While information will continue to grow, knowledge processing will continue alongside. A major charecterstic would be that most of this knowledge will be Free and easily accessible by any user in some form on any device - desktop or mobile. At this point, the Services linked to Knowledge will be at a premium rather than the knowledge itself. It will be really interesting to see the way the world adapts to that scenario at that point in time. Many of our current controlled-information based business models will break down leading to larger Services and products based models with rapid turn-arond for information and processing.
