Life As It Goes By

Saw this headline sometime early this month, I was a bit taken by the fact that Vermont is the fourth U.S. state to have gay marriage laws which accept the legality of gay matrimony. There is now 29 states (one of which is notably California) that have lifted the constitutional ban on such unions in. Not long after the headline, there was news from India that gay marriage is legalized there as well.

What’s with this wave really? Are we so eager to make history? I am not against gay marriage. I am happily married with my wife (and yes, she is a … she, of course ;P). So, I have no interest in joining this fight. As always, I stand by and give my two-cents worth of thoughts.

So why? I don’t know. Sorry, I didn’t do gay history. I don’t even know when the word “gay” was invented. I am not sure if the word “gay” is offensive anymore. Is it supposed to mean another sex now? I mean when I fill in a government application form, do I have see a new checkbox? I believe some forms have to be modified now. One for sure is the marriage registration form or whatever you call that in your country.

To me, this wave has its impacts, for sure. Like every normal marriage, every couple faces the possibility of separating. What about divorce for the gay marriages? It’s easy from the surface but most countries protect women and their rights through Women’s Act. If both women are happily married and angrily divorced, who should get what? Sounds like a new market for lawyers huh? There is also no laws to prevent a person to be married both sexes from time to time. This could happen too, isn’t it? Mood changes and we, as consumer, are already changing our tastes so rapidly nowadays that no one keeps their favourite car for more than 10 years anymore.

I am not trying to stop thing from happening. It already happened and is moving fast. I can accept this fact. The point is I am not a parent yet. Imagine your children choose their paths in such a way (not that it’s disgraceful anymore). How would you feel? If you are fine, I believe you have what it takes to face the future. If not, I suggest you get yourself prepared, starting from right now. Let me help you a bit. Imagine a gay channel in TV soon. A regular TV program for gay in your favourite channel. Advertisements targeted at gays on all media that you are exposed to. And more realistically, your neighbour could be them too. Are you used to word, gay now? No? I strongly feel that the word has been polluted too much over the years. The next alternative, homosexual, sounds worse (more like a medical term describing freak to me). Since it is making history, I feel the related parties or organisations should start thinking of a better term to label themselves. I am rather superstitious in such things. In short, take my advice. No one pays for a stone until you call it a diamond.

Finally, for a record to mankind, I would like to congratulate everyone to complete all the combination for marriage. Simple statistics tell you that for 2 different sexes, there are 4 combinations which are possible. For more than 2 millennium, we have our options to just 2 and now we have leapfrogged 2 times. You don’t have to perform sex change to marry someone of your sex. You are free to choose anyone now to be your … er … partner. I hope I can write in a more universal, “unisex” way in future, so that I won’t be bothered by the “he or she” or “they” usage. Think it would be tougher for my kids to decide who to go out with. By the way, if a guy is sexually harassed, in the eyes of the court, by another guy, what should be the verdict? It’s already tough to debate between a man and a woman. What if it’s a woman who “rapes” (correct me if I am wrong in the choice of word) another?

You can say that I am just not too ready for all these. Or maybe I think too much. It takes time. I am quite certain that I will get used to it. Because I don’t think it’s going to go away. Nonetheless, the gay population is not so significant in today’s world. There is room for growth. God knows what will happen (I didn’t forget you ya). One day, our future generations might be marrying his or her or its robot, dog, car, TV or anything that is recognized in the law.

Not long ago I had attended a conference on Web 2.0 and in one of the talks, I was introduced to the concept of Web 3.0. It was the first time I acquainted myself with the latest technology on Internet. Obviously, my mouth was wide open when the speaker threw all these new terms to my life. For a moment, I felt so backward and then, I re-assured myself that being there has made me one of the pioneers in this knowledge (let’s not compare with others…). My first thought of Web 3.0, “is it a marketing gimmick?” Someone must be wanting to outrun others and jump the ship from 2.0 to 3.0 by introducing some funny ideas. I mean it’s normal when people have already started populating words with 2.0 behind (good money for dictionaries though). It’s sooner or later that all the words we know will have numerals at the back…

So what’s Web 3.0? Is there really such a thing? Well, it turn out to be true. It always difficult to accept things that you rarely are in contact with. Web 3.0 is related to the semantic Web. In fact, based on Wikipedia’s explanation, semantic web is a component of Web 3.0 (quoted from the Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of WWW).

What semantic web means is this: a more “meaningful” web that can link to one another through “meaningful” relationships (in my very own words, please “comms” me if I am wrong). In Web 1.0, the websites provide static information which people just read from them. In Web 2.0, these information becomes alive. You can now directly communicate with websites and use their services like yours. However, the whole wide web is still in a mess. For example, when you do a search on “Television”, you will see 301 million results. But you are looking for, is probably the television programme for tonight, or prices of television (LCD, Plasma or LED). A word can have many specific meanings or different applications. So if the web is more structured (i.e. categorized nicely), you may find what you want in a faster manner, compared to going through the millions of results.

For a quick demonstration, click on this.

If you think Google is the only one equipped with this, then you are wrong. Try clicking on an article on Washington Post’s website (sorry, it used to be free access without membership login). You will see at the bottom and below the article, a box with a number of circles with names of the key people or organisations in them. Click on any one of them, you will see a few more circles linking to the one that you have clicked. This shows the related items and it is a perfect application of semantic web.

When I tried to pitch this new finding to my colleagues, they gave me the same reply, “So?”. I could only say that this is still in the early stage of development. The killer application is yet to be found. How many people have really heard of MPEG-7 or MPEG-21? How about 4G and 7G? All these take time to develop, mature and apply broadly and deeply. I know you are going to ask me, “so what’s in for me then?”. I am sure you are like me: I am not going to spend time linking up whole the web and try to make meaning out of them. I would rather wait and make use of the outcome.

I would like to think in this way. This new web should give an experience, much alike to that of Amazon’s. While you browse its catalog, it studies you and your actions. It remembers and tries to recommend you the related items. The deeper you follow their recommendations, the more advanced or specialized the recommendations would be. What’s even more amaz(on)ing is that it can package a nice deal for you instantly. Or it can create tailored promotions for you on your next visit or in your newsletter. The temptation to spend is high as you are getting things that you are at least interested in.

Now, imagine the web only gives you information that you are only interested in. It also remembers what you looked for previously and when you are back to this search again. It gives more in-depth information and other alternatives that are very close to what you are finding. It draws you to look further and find more than what you intend to. What would you say of this experience? Satisfied user, you must be. It completes you.

If this is too abstract, let me try again. For instance, you are looking for a recipe. You run the dish name on the search engine, and it returns the exact recipe. Not only that, it also provide some links to videos showing the steps, cheap prices of the ingredients and where to get them, different varieties of the recipe for different taste buds (the search engine probably remembers yours!) and cooking lessons that will help you in this dish. Not only your search is a fruitful one, it’s also a very instant one. Why waste time looking through the results one by one? This is what we call, “Personalization”. It’s all about you, the user of the WWW.

And how’s that for you?