Where We Were, Are, and Going. The State of the Internet
Mark Cuban posted a blog entry on Friday (thanks Techcrunch for the tip) discussing (perhaps defending) his comments regarding why he feels that the “Internet is Dead and Boring“, which has caused quite a stir. He states:
Every generation has its defining breakthrough. Cars, TV, Radio, Planes,highways, the wheel, the printing press, the list goes on forever. I’m sure in each generation to whom the invention was a breakthrough it may have been heretical to consider those inventions “dead and boring”. The reality is that at some point they stop changing. They stop evolving. They become utilities or utilitarian and are taken for granted.
Some of you may not want to admit it, but that’s exactly what the net has become. A utility. It has stopped evolving. Your Internet experience today is not much different than it was 5 years ago.
That’s not to say the impact of the Internet on the entire planet hasn’t been off the charts. It has been. It has changed the lives of billions of people and it will continue to be a utility to billions of people. Just like cars, TVs, Radio, Planes, Highways, you get the point.
Some people have tried to make the point that Web 2.0 is proof that the Internet is evolving. Actually it is the exact opposite. Web 2.0 is proof that the Internet has stopped evolving and stabilized as a platform. Its very very difficult to develop applications on a platform that is ever changing. Things stop working in that environment. Internet 1.0 wasn’t the most stable development environment. To days Internet is stable specifically because its now boring.(easy to avoid browser and script differences excluded)
Now anyone who is familiar with Mark Cuban knows that he is: (a) smart, (b) tells it as he sees it and (c) not afraid of controversy. His posting is poignant and his argument is salient and logical. That’s not a bad thing and I know he wasn’t trying to downplay the significance of the transformation from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, but rather uses it to justify his rationale and start a dialogue. He is also clear to point out that services like Facebook, Flickr and YouTube are not the “Internet” but rather applications that run on the Internet.
Despite the compelling argument Cuban puts forward, I’m not sure that I would agree with his absolutist perspective. I think the innovation and introduction of new tools, services and applications that meet previously unmet / unknown needs has slowed down considerably, but I think that the Internet is far from boring and even farther from dead. For some reason, I don’t think I’m alone in that opinion.
A recent posting on Read/Write Web by Alex Iskold titled “The Digestion Phase: How We Got Here And Where We Are Going Next” suggests that because the Internet and technological innovation/development in general, like many other things, are cyclical we have simply entered a cooling-off period, or as he calls it a “Digestion Phase”. In justifying his position Iskold offers that:
…a digestion phase is a period of time for us to reflect, to integrate, and to understand recent technologies and how they fit together. It is the outcome of this phase that will decide if we continue to slide or if we rebound and start climbing back up. The deciding factor will be the true value of the technologies that we created.
He goes on to describe the evolution and transformation from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 and how the shift was driven by a few key advancements: broadband, blogs, ajax and social networking. He also suggests that we are simply in a clean-up period where companies, organizations and individuals are now stopping to take a look at/reflect on what works and what doesn’t and what can be done to fix it without changing its core purpose, or as Martin Fowler calls it: refactoring.
The digestion phase gives companies a great chance to improve their services. These improvements may include performance and scalability changes, user interface enhancements, the creation of an API, and compliance with standards. This is the time to simplify and to remove things that are not needed.
He closes the article by suggesting that there is no shortage of ideas just the ability to make use of them. And thanks to the pace of technological development, these cooling off periods will get shorter and shorter, especially as we grow accustomed to accepting and embracing rapidly changing technologies.
I tend to think that Iskold has it more right that Cuban, and while it may be seen by some as a boring period, I am happy that things have cooled off enough that I can catch my breath, make sense of everything that has happened over the past few years and get ready for the next wave of breakthroughs that is surely lying in wait.
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My name is Dave Sabol and I work at the intersection of technology, online learning and knowledge management. Associated Knowledge is my way of capturing the insight that I gain as I navigate my way through the world of social media and open source technology.
