I received an article from a friend about the concept of removing author credits from news stories and editorials all together. Although one can understand the perspective and reasoning as to why author credits are not needed in a wonderful world of Wiki, I'm thinking that in certain cases not only will credits become more prominent, but will also be essential as background information on the source of the information, especially with the rise of tabloid journalism.
Over the next five to ten years professionally published articles will become more like community property. More specifically, someone edits a previously written article to their liking, then would post the revised article with their name listed as an editor (or additional content provided by themselves) next to the original writer. It will work similar to Wikipedia. You'll be able to click on the author (and then the additional author's) complete set of vital statistics, and thus reveal one's political affiliations, perspectives, that sort of thing. This will certainly come more into play as Web 3.0 comes into focus, when... in theory the web will visually become more multidimensional. We might physically be able to see two sides of an argument. This would future illustrate how points and counterpoints are, in many ways, reliant on the other's existence.
This is the future of web content, the ability to see information from multiple perspectives, and choose what information you want to allow in your life according to preference. Removing an author's name is the wrong direction. People will want to know the sources of the information, and consider that aspect just as important as the information itself. With technology, the idea of just presenting related stories will be old hat. We'll be able to show opposing stories, semi-related stories, and have visual scales showing just how much one perspective deviates from the other. Features like this will become more necessary as the internet grows in size, and will be made possible when the web's next iteration includes new artificial intelligence capabilities, which can already be hinted at when amazon.com tells you what you may like to purchase based on your previous searches.
Information management and process will not only be the future of commercial web, but it will also be a major them in 21st century art. More on that later...
