“We have created a global system for shocking us with surprises,” observed Leonard Kleinrock, a UCLA professor who played an influential role in the development of the Internet.
The fathers of the Internet never imagined in the early days that they were creating a global network with the ability to enable computers and devices of any kind to be connected together. And that via the Internet, billions of users would communicate and publish content.
Over the past two decades, the Web, a medium for publishing content, has flourished on the Internet and provided the main motivation for people to connect to it. The growth was so exceptional that most of today’s users mistakenly confuse the Web for the Internet.
The Web is not the only medium that “lives on top” of the Internet. There is also email, a medium for exchanging messages, as well as the instant messaging medium. But the beauty of the Internet is that it was designed as an open and global infrastructure, allowing for new mediums to be created at any time.
Alongside the Web, Frogans is an emerging new medium for publishing content on the Internet. As a new medium, Frogans is not meant for publishing websites; Frogans sites are a new kind of site founded upon a different format.
Frogans enables a new kind of communication between end users and content publishers. Compared to the web, Frogans suggests visual communication over text, focused content over long pages, and natural interaction over complex user interfaces.
For example, a Frogans site could be used to publish interactive content involving short, frequent exchanges for the benefit of end users. Frogans sites can also be used for any purpose – from online shopping to online banking.
Ultimately, Frogans is a medium which introduces a new kind of identifier, called Frogans addresses, that allow you to access Frogans sites. Frogans addresses are built around a “star,” just like email addresses are built around the “@” sign. Frogans addresses can be written in any language and therefore are suitable for naming Frogans sites in all countries.
Today, after 18 years of research, development, and testing, Frogans has reached the point where it is sufficiently mature for being progressively introduced to the general public. In order to trigger wide adoption of Frogans as a medium, the OP3FT, the non-profit organization in charge of Frogans, has set three objectives:
- Ensure that developers have the skills required to develop Frogans sites and supporting software.
- Present the new medium to key influencers in the IT industry, research & education, and government.
- Have Frogans sites published by major content publishers around the world.
To learn more about this new medium, join us during our session Introducing Frogans: A New Medium on Top of the Internet on Monday, May 7 at 2:45 p.m. or stop by the OP3FT Global Spaces booth during the 2018 Internet2 Global Summit.
Article originally posted on the Internet2 blog
