Design 21: Social Design Network

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Will the introduction of these mesh networked laptops change the web? I feel at the least, with more young people, with more capacity and with education, it's hard to imagine that the web will not develop into a 3.0 that is totally unrecognizable from our nascent "2.0" perspective.

That futurism avoids George's call for thoughtful design, tho'

Sustainable Web Development must go beyond money and effort and enters into the realm of public good. Public good means that consumption by one individual does not reduce the good available for consumption by others. A pure example of a public good is air - you breathing it doesn't stop me from breathing it (water was once considered a public good, but alas, times change). Creative works are often referred to as Public Good.

In economy, this topic is highly theoretical, however the Internet starts to offer new examples that are real. This is not to say that the Internet itself is a public good, but accessibility of it is (or should be).

Open Source Development and the buzz word Web 2.0 has marked a clear shift towards Internetworking as a Public Good. Social Networking, Media Sharing, Syndication, Blogs, Wiki's, etc all aim towards sharing and playing well together. Creating software that can mashup with other software is becoming more and more prevalent.

Actually using the web for more than reference and email has drastically changed in the last few years. No longer do you need to be technically savvy (or have a friend that is) to publish, communicate or assert yourself through this medium.

But what is the endgame of Open Source and the Web 2.0 trend, fad, crazy ... whatever you wanna call it? Is it sustainable or is it a burst of energy that is propelling the Internet in order for the private sector to take it over to do business through it?

Big business is scrabb...

The idea of web accessibility has been a hot topic in web development. According to Wikipedia, Web accessibility refers to the practice of making Web pages accessible to people using a wide range of user agent software and devices, not just standard Web browsers. This is especially important for people with disabilities such as visual impairment. Design for accessibility is a sub-category of good design for usability.

Web accessibility has peeked commercial interests also because websites that are accessible work well on mobile devices and allows for easy syndication of content to many platforms - publish once, use many times.

Recently there has been a lot of buzz around the idea of Sustainable Web Development and Design 21 seems like a good forum to discuss the concept. So, I begin ...

From an ecological perspective, sustainability is conserving an ecological balance by avoiding depletion of natural resources. I've been working on websites going on 15 years and the same issues always creep up. A website is designed and 1-2 years later, it needs to be redesigned because the organization has grown or the business requirements have changed. This cycle is not sustainable because the website is always behind the organization (as opposed to in-line with it) and creates a financial drain.

Sustainable Web Development includes accessibility but then extends it to scalabilty and agility. Scalability is the ability to grow the website and its functionality without having to start o...