New technologies emerge in a far shorter time span than ever before in the history of mankind. While many of these technologies are incremental improvements over what is already available, others completely break from the pattern and redefine entire industries, change our mode of thinking about something, or just introduce new concepts to our knowledge bank.

In his 1997 best-selling book, "The Innovator’s Dilemma," Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen segregates new technology into two categories: sustaining and disruptive. Sustaining technology relies on incremental improvements to an already established technology, while Disruptive technology is new, and unexpectedly displaces an established technology. By its very nature, disruptive technologies lack refinement, often have performance problems because these are new, appeal to a rather limited audience, and may not yet have a proven practical application.

It’s not everyday that you come across a product that makes you sit up and just wonder if you’ve been sleeping all along. And I can simply say there is one upcoming product that made me feel just like that. Never before in my 18 years of working with technology have I encountered a product for which the word ‘wow’ wouldn’t suffice. I guess Google’s search engine is the only technology that comes ‘second’ in my mind…

I agree it might just be the lure of a sexy new technology. But then, if you just go through Microsoft Live Labs’ Photosynth product, well, you’ll realize what I’m saying. So, what is this Photosynth? Nothing much really, if you just look at what it says it does. But then, if you look at what goes behind the front-end and what the ultimate objective of the project is, it’s nothing short of ‘amazingly wowwwwww’.

I remember the days when data was data, and information was a structured, usable form of that data. And then came knowledge, and a horde of definitions distinguishing data from information, and information from knowledge. We moved on from ‘data’ management to ‘information’ systems. And then we got ‘knowledge’ in knowledge management systems, knowledge bases, knowledge repositories, and more such systems.

I am often asked if this distinction even matters anymore. After all, Google has taken on itself the task of codifying and storing all the ‘knowledge’ that humankind has accumulated over the ages, and for most people, it seems to be succeeding in doing just that. (Although I beg to disagree)!! Imagine a world without Google today. Yes, it’s scary, but is it ‘knowledge’ that we get on Google, or merely ‘information’. Or is it ‘data’? Again, does it matter?

Over the past few years, the Web has evolved from a storehouse of data to a ‘global repository of knowledge’ for individuals, organizations, governments, and every social community for that matter. It has become a pervasive support system for people in their daily routine. How many of us can live without email today? Or Blogs? Or Community Forums?

A fundamental transition that characterizes web today is from a uni-directional information flow, where the publishers of content controlled the web (as in the traditional world), to a more federated structure where user-generated content gives a platform its value. The ‘power’ has moved from the publishers to the users.