As you may have noticed, I’ve been playing around these past few weeks with various online advertising systems in an effort to add in new revenue streams from my website. Some of them are more successful than others. (Some of them are not successful at all)

I have been gazing for quite a while now into my crystal ball, looking at how web and other technologies are going. I have even been contacted by tech companies in the past who wanted to talk to me about my visions for these things. It seems like the best ways to really express them and to share in the process of discovering new technology possibilities though is simply in asking people questions: questions which challenge their base assumptions about what technology is, what it means to them, and how they interact with it.

Not surprisingly, this is one of the best ways to teach anybody anything: the Socratic method. Ask questions which lead people to their own discoveries. You learn much better when you learn something under the power of your own steam than when people simply come out and tell you something. Certainly it pays to have the benefit of other people’s experiences though, which I always try to share in the questioning process.

In any event, one of the current Socratic threads which I would like to engage in has to do with the future of online advertising. As I’ve written elsewhere, getting into the advertising game has enabled me to work full-time on my website. And it has allowed me the opportunity to live a lifestyle which is much more pleasant and useful to me creatively. So while there are certainly drawbacks, I have derived great value personally out of finding the best methods to make money online.

But I see these as about to change rapidly. I can foresee a quantum leap in information organization looming large on the horizon - one which I think will wash away - possibly for good - many aspects of how companies and individuals are currently making money from advertising online right now. So my question for you, where do you see these things going? I have a bunch of ideas
myself, but want to start a broader conversation - one which we can hopefully thread together with others we’ve already begun regarding things like shared value communities, complementary currencies, etc.