October 16, 2006, 10:33 AM — As it happens, I am writing this on One Web Day[1]. Today would be a perfect day to reflect on how the Web has changed my life and write about it. I am feeling a little contrarian so I won't do that.
As it happens, I am also writing this the day before I am due to be guest at a wedding that takes place in my home town. Today would be a perfect day to plan ahead and get ready for it. I won't do that either. Instead, I will consume some minutes thinking about what a truly web-enabled wedding might look like. Perhaps not this year, but perhaps some time soon.
Now let me think. What would my experience be, as a guest at a future web-enabled wedding? Presumably, I would have received my invitation on e-mail and received a link to the private group blog and RSS feed charting the progress towards the happy day. Presumably I would receive GPS coordinates to the location so that I can create a route map online and also view detailed information about the location itself. The bride and groom would operate an electronic "wish list" for wedding presents and guests could purchase any item off the list online with a single click.
As I arrive for the ceremony, I would be handed a disposable WIFI enabled digital camera. Guests would be encouraged to take shots during the day and all photos would be uploaded over WIFI to the online photo bank of the happy couple as soon as the shots are taken.
The official video blogger of the event would wander around with a discrete camera attached to his lapel, creating a video of the event. This too would be uploaded over the WIFI hotspot and segments made publicly available on the personal blogs of various guests. The official text blogger would also wander around, tapping things into his browser-enabled phone and updating a website for the throngs of people who would love to have been at the wedding but had to stay at home and just follow the event on broadband. Web-cams are placed discretely around the location to give these home-bound guests a variety of viewpoints.
As the day progresses the mother of the bride would select various photographs, the electronic text of the ceremony, the PDF of menu from the meal and arranges for a print-on-demand publisher to make a perfect bound book of the happy day available for purchase on-line. A bound copy would be posted to each guest in the week after the wedding.
During the speeches, a large screen is used to surf to messages and podcasts coming in real time from virtual guests watching the proceedings from afar.
The complete audio transcript of the ceremony would be copied onto the flash memory storage built into the gold rings of the bride and groom and backed up online.
In the past, I have always had something of a fear of weddings on the basis that I might find myself a little lost for something to do if the ceremonial parts go on too long. If even a fraction of this webby stuff happens, I'll have my hands full doing technical support.
