The Next Wave of Format

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•Introduction

•The nature of formats

•How new formats come to be

•The state of creative formats on the web today

•The next wave of format

   Formats for coherence

   Formats for diversity

   Formats for navigation

   Formats for flux

   Formats for ubiquity

   Formats for identifying origins

•Conclusion

Formats for ubiquity: Taking advantage of multiple devices and windows.

Ultimately, the web is less a communications medium than an index to human activity. Not long from now, many households and offices will have five to ten devices connected to the web per individual — some through wireless links, and some through high-bandwidth always-on cable or telephone connections. In such a ubiquitous-computing environment, any physical object is potentially a vehicle for engagement. Cars honk when you enter a parking lot; billboards change to reflect the purchasing profiles of the people passing them; and people grow accustomed to having multiple web-connected vehicles, side by side in front of them.

Each piece of hardware has its own format requirements, and one of the great challenges of creative work will be cheap and easy multi-format design. This essay, for instance, had to be written twice — once for onscreen use, where I could use links to convey digressive points and references, and once for print (including computer print-outs), where every statement had to be made in linear sequence. If e-books or PDA-web-readers were as commonplace as they will likely be in five years, I would have had to create four separate versions, each with its own emerging formats to consider using.

Some formats of the future will span three or four devices, coordinationg video shown on one with text and images shown on another, and sound heard from a third. I can imagine reading the same text on two screens simultaneously — one large computer screen, showing a full page view, and one PDA, with the text flowing across a narrow band just fast enough to accommodate the user’s reading speed. (Like machines that train speed-readers, these PDAs could also be set to gradually help you increase your speed.)

Here is one group, at MIT, that has begun, in interesting ways, to think about the formats that can and should emerge in an interlinked environment of ubiquitous devices.

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