Technology and its applications in modern society

¶ … Wiki Technology

Wiki is a technology is based on a distributed, open source Web Content Management (WCM) system that interlinks web pages and over time, builds an index by subject area. Wikis have been called the open source equivalent of knowledge management systems (Kosik, 2008) in that they allow for continual updates of subjects of interests from a community of users. Wikis are used both for powering public websites that seek to be sources of knowledge, and increasingly on corporate intranets, secured behind firewalls, so that the information stored is kept confidential (Kosik, 2008). At its most fundamental a Wiki is an interlinking platform comprised of either HTML or XML, with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to provide greater flexibility in data formatting. The progression of Wikis is being driven by the rapid advances in knowledge management systems, the integration possible with XML, and the growth of semantic search. Based on these factors, the progression of growth for Wikis to 2029, with updates in the years of 2015 and 2020 are provided.

Timeline for Wiki Technologies' Progression

The initial Wiki software was created in 1995 by software engineer Ward Cunningham who wanted to create a collaborative community platform which would allow fellow engineers to share what they had learned about specific projects and gain access to the information quickly. In constructing the collaborative platform that initially shared HTML links but would eventually be augmented with XML links and a platform suitable for enterprise-wide use, Wikis grew rapidly, becoming prevalent in education as a means to assist students with the learning process (Hazari, Moreland, 2009).

Coincident with the development of Wikis was the development of the collection of technologies that also was bringing high level of collaboration to individuals and companies. The collection of these technologies has become known as Web 2.0 and a Meme Map of them are shown in Figure 1 (O'Reilly, 2005). These technologies served as a catalyst, along with advances in knowledge management systems, XML integration development, and semantic search, to a groundswell of interest (Bernoff, Li, 2008) in all forms of collaboration.

Wikis contributed to the concepts on which Web 2.0 foundational concepts are based (O'Reilly, 2005). From the concept of "hackability" or as other Wiki developers have called it "folksonomies" which is the creation of taxonomies or structures of data based on the level and perspective of knowledge a person has to the development of entire Wikis based on perception of brands (Bernoff, Li, 2008), Wikis are permeating nearly every aspect of knowledge management and Web Content Management (WCM).

2015 Wiki Advancements

Given the rapid growth of Wikis for knowledge management within commercial and government organizations, throughout the educational community and within countless departments and divisions of corporations, by 2015 the advances will be significant for this technology. First, beginning with the development of XML integration links between enterprise Wikis (Stephens, 2007) followed by the development of more efficient search algorithms to capture content of interest by personalization options of users, Wikis will become inordinately more powerful at providing insightful data than they are today. There will be the ability to create personalized taxonomies or structures of data as well.

2020 Wiki Technology

Within eleven years Wikis will become capable of tailoring linguistic modeling to personalization options and creating entire semantically-derived Wiki structures (Schaffert, Bry, Baumeister, Kiesel, 2008). In addition Wikis will also be capable of being used on mobile platforms much more pervasively than they are today. This will be attributable to the XML integration (Stephens, 2007) that is occurring today on the Wiki platform. Content from Wikis of interest will be queried and entirely new data structures, presentable in the format of interest of the user, will be commonplace. As a result Wikis will progress from being merely hierarchical data structures to being more relational databases of knowledge that are tailored across related Wikis through XML integration. This period of time will also see Wikis and the knowledge management systems defined as part of Web 2.0 converges and create personal knowledge management global communities that users can get updates from instantaneously (O'Reilly, 2005).

2029 Wiki Technology