Since the invention of the internet, humankind has been destined for a world in which the ability to access information is ubiquitous and instantaneous. And when any individual can become aware of any idea or piece of knowledge at any time in any place, then a functional collective conscious will be realized. When I say functional collective conscious, I mean that in addition to simply being cognizant of the same memes, each of us will have the ability to actively call up information that is stored not in our own brains but in this networked collective conscious, and that our ability to access this remote information will be so quick and effortless as to be effectively the same as possessing the knowledge in our own brains.

3 contemporary technology developments will each play an important role in taking us one step closer to this future reality: the FCC's upcoming 700 MHz Band auction, Custom Vertical Search, and the Semantic Web.

On January 16, 2008 the FCC will auction off the last portion of the wireless spectrum capable of enabling a nationwide hi-speed digital communications network. In addition to the major telecoms, Google has made itself known as a likely bidder. And yesterday, Business Week reported that Apple might get in on the action, too. Although it may sound overly optimistic, within the next couple years, we might very well see Google offering everyone in the US unlimited access to a voice and data communications network supported only by advertising. No more phone and internet bills to Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, TimeWarner, and whoever else. The new network will be fast and wireless, and it will be everywhere. And this is a very real step towards completely ubiquitous access to digital information.

As Read/WriteWeb discussed in this post about Google's new custom search engine, if executed effectively, Vertical Search can be a powerful tool and add significant value to users' experience. Technorati is a classic example of a vertical search engine, but they could be much more fine-tuned than that. Imagine you're an online retailer who sells classic rock records on vinyl. Wouldn't it be nice for your potential customers if they could search the web for only the highest quality reviews of the classic albums you're selling? You could curate the sources for the reviews, and the visitor can search for the reviews they want to read. Another excellent potential use for custom vertical search would be personally relevant searches. Wouldn't it be nice to have a filter on Google to just search everything your online friends may have said about a particular subject? When I heard that Google was beginning to allow any user to create their own custom vertical search, I began to imagine what might happen if users also started tagging different custom searches with their own labels? And then Google leveraged that layer of categorization to enhance their regular search? Google could become much smarter very quickly if it not only tracked users' perceptions of Google's search results - as it does now by following links and clicks - but also tracked users' perceptions of each other's searches.

Wikipedia says: "The semantic web is an evolving extension of the World Wide Web in which web content can be expressed not only in natural language, but also in a format that can be read and used by software agents, thus permitting them to find, share and integrate information more easily." In effect, what this means is that elements of web content, like this blog entry, are labeled in ways that are useful to computers, i.e. the computer is able to recognize the difference between the title, the body of the entry, the date of the entry, the author, the comments, etc. While this development may seem like the most basic of the three I've mentioned here, it's arguably the most important, because it is key in enabling the internet to better understand our queries of it.

Now imagine a world in which any time you are about to make any decision, you are able to instantly access all the information that you would find most relevant to your choice. When you're deciding what to cook for dinner, what movie to go see, where to get your car's oil changed, how to bet at blackjack, how to spell hors d'oeuvres. The results will be uniquely curated for each of us based on our social networks and personally tailored search filters. The results will only include the content we're seeking, not simply a url address. And consequently, it won't feel like it does now - get on the internet, Google it, sift through the results, read the web page, find your answer; it will be more like thinking to yourself, "What was the name of the street I grew up on? Delaware Ave."

Now, where does advertising fit into this new world?

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