Increasingly I find myself discussing the future of where decentralised technologies are headed. Increasingly I find myself discussing User Experience - my loathe for it with many of the current technologies.

With layer upon layer being added to the technology front, and tools such as those for rapid development taking steps to easing the burden on web developers, user experience is emerging as increasingly important to me.

Applications and user interfaces are becoming increasingly complex, cramming feature after feature into smaller spaces, and now with mobile techology really taking flight, increasingly I see the need for seamless user experience development environments.

Creating a seamless layer between application developer and application designer will become evermore imporant.

I've been reading a lot about REST lately, REST being at the heart of how I see decentralised systems evolving. The first step in the process towards what Rohit Khare calls AR+REST+ED Development(PDF). Asychronous, Routed, Representational State Transfer, Estimated, Distribution. I can't help but mention the WAKA protocol Roy T. Fielding has published some thoughts on here. What a cool name for a protocol.

What has occurred to me is the connector based approach of such a system. As standards emerge and are pushed, asychronous technologies such as the Bayuex Protocol and Comet for ajax, XMPP for messaging. JCR170 & JCR283 for Content Repositories, XML, RDF, Atom and many others. It has occured to me how much of a pivotal role user interfaces will have in tieing all of these technologies together in a manner that becomes a seamless experience for application designers in rapid appication environments. The technolgy is increasingly becoming transparent, accessed through universal connectors allowing increased productivity and creativity, its the interfaces that can take these to the next level.
This for me is the future of the internet. Creating seamless User Experiences in aide of augmenting humans. A lot of pioneering work in the area being done by Doug Englebart. The mother of all demo's a must see. As is Hyperscope.

It's creating that layer of seperation that has me excited as to where things are headed for ease of use and wide-spread adoption of technologies that allow users to communicate their ideas with like-minded others effectively. Creating connections and meaning in the process.

"The rate at which a person can mature is directly proportional to the embarrassment he can tolerate. I have tolerated a lot," says Engelbart of his life. Reader's Digest paid Engelbart $35 to publish that quote, more than he was paid for many of his revolutionary inventions.

Learning about the work Brad Neuberg is doing on the Hyperscope project and seeing the digital world through Doug Engelbart is absolutely fascinating. So much to take in.
Watch Brad's screencast on the Augment system Doug and his team developed way back in the 60's in aide of augmenting human intelligence. The original presentation hosted on Google Video is absolutely fascinating stuff.