There are a number of technologies emerging and evolving onto the web that offer the potential to redefine who the web works.  One blogged about here, was Google Wave, and another is the pushbutton web (aka the ‘pubsubhub’, for more on this incarnation, see here and here).  There might be a temptation to see such web-based developments, that are fairly tech-heavy, as something for the geeks, but I feel that they are important for all of us to understand as they offer fundamental restructuring of the way things are done and much change may follow from this.

So what is the pushbutton web?  It is catch-all term for a new technology approach that in essence decentralises the process of updating websites.  As, say, a news website is updated with a breaking story – this infomration may be important to a number of interested users.  As such there are a number of technologies, for example RSS, that inform interested parties that changes have been made to a site of interest.  Currently this is a centralised process; the site of interest, which also hosts the information, also controls the updating process to who-ever is interested in the updates.

By contrast the pushbutton web uses a p2p-like process whereby other users who accept the updates and also act as mini-servers for the changes, offering the updates to other interested parties.  This means that the central source for the updates is no longer the central point of the process and if this server is taken down, the updating can still continue via the ‘cloud’ of other pushbutton users.

There is also another reason why the current system is over-centralised; the update process involves the central server sending a message to all interested parties about the content of the update, and all interested parties must return to the centre to get a copy of the update.  The pushbutton web also addresses the flow of the update content; each pushbutton user also carries a copy of the updated content, so interested parties can get it from any carrier, not just the centre.

So why is this important?  Technology writer Anil Dash puts it best;

I have tremendous excitement about the new realtime era of web applications. While I’m fundamentally an optimistic person, I have great skepticism when it comes to mindless hype about new technologies, so it’s with a bit of reluctance that I indulge in some hype myself. But I think the Pushbutton web has the opportunity to give individuals and organizations with distinct and passionate voices the ability to be even more immediate and expressive on the web, and after ten years of publishing on the web, that’s the part I love the most.

Watch this space…