A lot of people are all up and upset about my comments that the Internet is dead and boring. Well guess what, it is. Every new technological, mechanical or intellectual breakthrough has its day, days, months and years. But they don't rule forever. That's the reality.
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)
Applications like Myspace, Facebook, Youtube, etc were able to explode in popularity because they worked. No one had to worry about their ISP making a change and things not working. The days of walled gardens like AOL, Prodigy and others were gone. The days of always on connections were not only upon us, but in sufficient numbers at home, work and school, that the applications ran fast enough to hold our interest and compel us to participate. In other words, the Internet stabilized. Great software was developed to run on the software.
Just as a reminder to some, Myspace, Facebook, Youtube, etc are not "the Internet". They are software applications that run on the Internet. Just like MicroSoft Excel is a software application that runs on MicroSoft and Apple operating systems.
The days of the Internet creating explosively exciting ideas are dead. They are dead until bandwidth throughput to the home reaches far higher numbers than the vast majority of broadband users get today.
Few people's actual throughput to their homes have increased more than 5mbs in the past 5 years, and few people's throughput (if you dint understand the difference between throughput and the marketed downstream speeds your read from your ISP, you should) to their homes will increase more than 10mbs in the next 5 years. That's not enough to define a platform that allows really smart people to come up with groundbreaking ideas.
In fact, if you index the expected growth in bandwidth consumption by applications that are heavy LAST MILE bandwidth users (as opposed to the Internet backbone where there is plenty of bandwidth but consumers cant get to it) vs the actual increase in LAST MILE bandwidth available to the home, our net effective throughput to the home could decline over the next few years. The Internet is like a highway. There is plenty of room for everyone to go as fast as the throughput will let you go, that is until the traffic forces everyone to slow down.
For some reason a lot of people don't understand that concept.
So, let me repeat, The days of the Internet creating explosively exciting ideas are dead for the foreseeable future..
The Internet is boring. That is not a bad thing. In fact its easy to make the argument that its a great thing. That it has become the utility that the people who worked to get it started firmly believed it would. That it finally is the platform for any number of mundane applications that are easy to write and that anyone can use and trust.
Just like wheels, printing presses, cars, TV, radio, electricity, water.....
When we reach a point
The Internet is Dead and Boring
Recent Posts
Reader Comments
(Page 4)63. Mark-
This site is what you should invest in next: Make it the ANTI- YOU TUBE. I love it, and wanted to share it with you.
Cheers-
http://www.iklipz.com
Posted at 7:33PM on Aug 27th 2007 by Tom Erickson
64. I agree that it’s reached utility phase. Maybe our expectations for it were too high. Like anything new, it starts as an end in and of itself, but now, like a tool, it’s just a means to an end.
Seriously, was the promise of the internet REALLY supposed to be a :40 sec clip of two drunk guys racing lawnmowers? Or in the bigger picture, the ability to let everyone have a voice?
In the case of the former, mission accomplished. And in the latter? Lot of third-world countries without internet access would say no.
66. big,old line companies will only improve their products slightly over time.
as long as the basic product is good(utility)and serves the purpose for which it was invented, the company will attempt to make money with as little innovation as possible.
It is only when a competitor enters the picture, or sales begin to stall, that the companies will dig into their "laboratories" to add a few bells and whistles to the product therefore, ramping up sales with their "new" innovations.
Posted at 12:07AM on Aug 28th 2007 by tom vanyo
67. Your Private Identity Provider would then provision your real, pseudonymous, or anonymous identity to any Internet site you visit that requires some level of identity or security information.
Posted at 2:36AM on Aug 28th 2007 by capacitor distributor
68. I think you're partly right. Right about everything but the next explosion being dependant on faster speeds. Crowd-based ideas (social bookmarking etc) are just starting out - we have no idea what to expect when millions of people are able to collaborate and interact in new ways. That's the immediate future and it's ridiculously exciting.
70. I agree Mark, newspapers and magazines...evrything old is new again!
Posted at 2:21PM on Aug 28th 2007 by Charles "Laker Fan" Gerencser
72. I love this post. And yes, the Internet is boring -- like plumbing, bread, rice and any number of the things we rely on big time and take for granted.
It has quietly revolutionized my life by making it possible for me to do all kinds of research. Which in itself could be considered boring, but is my bread-and-butter.
I expect a few visionaries (like you?) will find new ways to make it exciting again.
Posted at 1:10AM on Aug 29th 2007 by Writes
73. Mark,
Dead on. And dead wrong. Yes, the Internet is a platform, and is stabilizing. But "boring" is, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder. I don't facebook and don't care to. But I use the Internet numerous times a day to find information that otherwise would be impossible for me. Information that I don't necessarily "need" but am interested in - and that excites me (both the information and the ability to acquire). I have cried just today listening to some music I have downloaded. And I have books on my night stand that rock my world - books I only know of because I've followed a trail of happenstance links on the Web. The use of the Web for me is far from boring. Now, is the Internet *itself* boring? Again, a perspective made in the mind of the observer. Is the excitement there of hand-building one's first HTTP 0.9 request? No. Or of hand-tuning BIND data to make a resolver work. No. As you point out, the system has become stable enough on top of which amazing applications are being built that rely on rock-solid CSS, blazingly fast HTML rendering (yeah WebKit!), and 5Meg downlaod speeds. But let's look at automobiles -- they became "stable" when? 1950s maybe. How many people would trade their even-mediocre-by-today's-standards car in for an un-air-conditioned, column-shift, oil-smoking 1955 vehicle? Not many. The steady but unstopped innovation happens little-by-little. Is that boring? Maybe to you. But the devil is in the details, and rooting the devil from the details of technology is a better place to go looking for the slippery, well, devil, than it is by allowing fundamentalists to presume it lurks in the mind of others. Politics -- they're never boring. They're utterly trite though. And so perhaps your claim better rests aimed upon the claim that the Internet has become trite. Sure, it's used by millions. So, if your don't want to be bored, you gotta find the next revolution. There's a heckuva witch's brew boiling in the cauldron's of the molecular biology. That's if we get to live to see the outcome, for global warming, biospheric degradation, and resource depletion are upon us, and they'll arrive come hell (ah, there's that slipper devil) or high water (Greenland, your ice sheets were once so lovely). Bored? In times like these? Only because the Internet is also the greatest heights to which the Bread and Circuses of the post-modern welfare state has risen -- YouTube distracts with fascinating power -- have you seen the Hippo that sleeps on the porch? Change the channel, Mark -- it's the choices one makes in what one views and does that make all the difference between boredom and action. Entertainment is Death.
Posted at 5:03AM on Aug 29th 2007 by Zhami
75. You are right. It is boring. The content is waning. It does not seem new and fresh anymore. I think the problem is web 2.0 me too
technology. Everyone is replicating the same thing over and over.
Microsoft's approach of software and services seems the most promising, but it too will require greater throughput and the elimination of latency. I get really bored these days and nothing
just screams "what a cool thing" anymore. With apps like firefox getting more bloated and "social", google getting more distracted with its vision...yawn!
76. I agree with you Mark. I think we will see no major changes to the internet for a while. New sites and new net-based applications will get our attention, but I do not see the big convergence that everyone speaks of coming anytime soon. I would not say the internet is dead per se, but I would say that it has matured. And it certainly is mostly boring; a utility as you say. Unless porn is your thing! As far as video on the web goes, I don't see how it can compete long-term with HD television, DVRs, HD-DVD and Blu-ray. Sure it will steal some audience, but HD is just getting started.
Posted at 1:52PM on Aug 29th 2007 by Louis James
77. MC: check my #30 post and todays AP:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070829/ap_on_hi_te/techbit_rebuilding_the_internet
Posted at 3:19PM on Aug 29th 2007 by Mary Clemente
78. Mark,
Wow! You know how to get people passionate!
After reading your post, my biggest dilemma with your statement is not whether your right or wrong, but if your headline was really useful for your point.
While you make some great points and get people thinking, it seems that your headline is where most people are probably getting hung up. It definitely sets a tone for the reader. What if you had written the same headline but in the form of a question?
The other question I keep asking myself is if you wrote the headline and then made the supporting material or if you came to the headline statement after writing the supporting material.
Anyways, nice read, thought provoking, informative, bad headline (IMO).
Posted at 5:04PM on Aug 29th 2007 by Casey R.
79. That's like saying everything that can be invented already has...
Sure, the Internet has infrastructure issues, but so does the human brain. Does that mean our brains can't be enhanced or rewired if we required different cognitive abilities?
The question is less about what can't do, but rather what we want to do that creates value like never before.
For example:
-What should the Internet be if wanted to virtually experience a specific point in time?
-Or to know the real time value of something based on the rated "vibe" of the entire network?
-How would we pass a favorite moment in 3 Dimensions to someone because that's the only way to establish context?
To think anything else is unimaginative to say the least.
Posted at 11:51PM on Aug 29th 2007 by Ray Podder
80. Mark,
One small bit of commentary in a rather lengthy list of comments. You did make note to cite the difference between an application, such as myspace, and the Web itself.
One differentiation you did not make was between the Web and the Internet. For example, services such as IRC live on the Internet but are not part of the World Wide Web.
What I'm suggesting is that a bold new technology could be built on top of the Internet - something new and different, and something that has nothing to do with the Web.
61. The next important big move will be the implementation of applications that will eliminate anonymity on the Internet, while making real privacy possible. I'm talking about vendor-neutral birth registration and death certification systems, hooked into the definitive governmental registries around the world.
It's foolish that nobody knows who anybody is on the Internet. All the problems, from identity theft on down, arise from that fact. The problem can be solved - it is technically trivial. But the political problems may take 50 years to overcome.
Posted at 6:42PM on Aug 27th 2007 by Larry Blumen