There is an old saying that I try to always remind myself of "When You Have a Hammer, Everything Looks Like a Nail"
Its always very easy, and even more tempting to try to take a utility that is readily available at minimal cost and use it as a technology that is the solution to everything. Has there been any of the world's ills that someone hasnt suggested can be cured by using the internet ?
From Education to Healthcare to Entertainment to Sports to Security to Corporate everything and just about anything and everything else. If Robitussin cant cure it, the Internet will. Of course the internet was not the first cure all for the worlds ills. The list is long. Im sure for the longest time fire was the cure all, but even in more modern times there is an exciting list.
In no particular order, electricity was a marval, and it benefited from Metcalfe's Law. Other beneficiaries of the network effect were the telegraph, roads and highways, railroads, airplanes and airports among others. With the exception of the telegraph, all went from technological miracle that reformed the world, to utilities that we can't live without, but we no long consider amazing. Is there any doubt that businesses and fortunes were built on these and other technologies and that kids coming out of school were considered ahead of the curve if they were educated in the latest and greatest ?
In just the past 20 years, knowing how to program in cobol, fortran and assembly language went from desirable by every major employer and a "great major" in school, to a worthy job, but with a chain to a desk and some really really old code to stare at every day. Database programming was the key to development riches. Its still valuable, but nothing like the opportunities of the 80s. Same can be said of C and Basic.
If you know everything there was to know about Novell networks and Lotus Notes, you could easily earn a living. Today, you better have expanded your skill set.
From Dbase to Clipper to ASP to PHP, scripting languages have built worthy applications on top of the network of choice of their day. The nature of scripting languages is that they always will be replaced by something better at some point. What happens to all those PHP apps in place today ?
No matter what the technology, language or platform, it has a limited shelf life and will use its position as "the Hammer" until it loses it.
For the past 15 years, everyone who "gets it" has tried to use the Internet to fix or create whatever they think "the next big thing " is. How much longer until there is something new that comes along and makes Web X.0 on the net look old and tired ?
Personally, I think Web 2.0 already is tired. When social networking or Twittering ,applications that are nice to have, but not a need to have, are the best we can do. We ain't doing much. Lets get real. As much fun as Twittering can be, shouldn't we all be able to agree that if its the latest and greatest application, the Internet has Jumped the Shark ?
We saw the same thing in the "PC Revolution". Back in the 80s, we waited anxiously as new desktops came out with ever increasing chips and hard drives, which when combined with ever improving programming languages, created an excitement over new software programs. Yes little Billy, there used to be a time when we wanted to see what new Word Processor or Spreadsheet or Database would come out to topple the incumbent market leader.
There was a time when there was an interesting, if not an exciting battle between Harvard Graphics and Powerpoint. Talk about ancient history. When was the last time you even looked to see if there were any new desktop apps available ? Ok maybe if you are a gamer you care. But thats it.
When was the last time a non gamer even cared about how fast a processor was for desktops and whether or not there were new desktops coming out ? Any excitement we have at all for is reserved for the shrinking of laptops and new hand held phones or devices
The PC Revolution is over. Dead. Its now just the PC Evolution.
Anyone who thinks the same wont happen to the Internet is not paying attention.
Which is exactly why its so much fun to write on this blog and tweak all the internet bigots out there. Yes, all of you who think that the Internet is the ultimate Hammer and that every problem that technology can touch is a nail, you are Internet Bigots.
Me, I believe that all internet sites are created equal, that the world has already moved past the Internet as magic to the internet as utility stage. I believe in morning walks, sipping diet peach snapple, the beauty of a jump shot ripping the cords and that if most of the world thinks the Internet is the Hammer, the solution to everything, that is the exact reason why it is not. I believe that there is something far, far better , that will have far more utility to all of us and is on the tip of the tongue of some kid out there somewhere and I will have a blast looking for it and hopefully finding it first, which will be a lot more fun than trying to compete with Facebook or Google.
In mean time, Im going to enjoy tweaking all the Internet Bigots out there, simply because its fun
The Internet Hammer and the everything Nail
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Reader Comments
(Page 1)2. I like your contrarian take on technology. A very Schumpeterian take, I might add.
But I think the Internet is not a "technology." It is a spontaneous ordering of people. Thus, it makes no sense to talk about it like a product or service.
A more relevant analogy to the Internet might other spontaneous orderings of private individuals, such as corporations or religious institutions. Or government.
From MC
Read the book the victorian internet. They said the same thing about the telegraph
Posted at 7:56PM on Jul 4th 2008 by Michael F. Martin
3. It's Independence day, little party at the Cuban's. Kids swimming, wife socializing and daddy sneaks away to post a "quick blog" and finds himself watching an hour and half of Chris Rock stand up remembering the day when he would have watched it with a doobie in hand. I think I wanna try some. Nice Tussin link
Happy 4th all
Posted at 8:17PM on Jul 4th 2008 by Mike
4. Novell networks..lol...former CNE here (Certified Novell Engineer)..
I do believe the Internet will be the catalyst for the next "hammer" since it can bring like minded people from around the world to collaborate on it wiki style.
Posted at 8:43PM on Jul 4th 2008 by Investment Property
5. Agreed.
Let's look at the titles of the posts on the homepage of ReadWriteWeb today, what used to be, in my opinion, one of the better tech blogs out there. Reminds me of the way Renaissance age philosophers mocked the medieval scholastics with their debates over the number of angels that could fit upon a match. Sadly, it doesn't even take hindsight to recognize the ridiculousness of 90% of this stuff.
TweetDeck: A Different Twitter Client
Iran Parliament to Debate Death Penalty for Bloggers
Six Ways To Update Your Status
Google's Street View Challenged in the UK
Polymeme: Memetracker With Editors
Finally, A Windows Mobile Facebook App!
ReadWriteWeb Integrates FriendFeed Into Our Comments
Hitwise: Yahoo Would be Just Fine Without Search
Swurl: Your Lifestream, Made Beautiful
Regator: Mainstreaming RSS Aggregators - 100 Invites
Mapstraction Takes Map Mashups To A Whole New Level
Posted at 8:59PM on Jul 4th 2008 by Gabe
6. Right on Mark. Except I think we're way past jumping the shark. Now we're watching Joanie Loves Chachi.
Posted at 9:14PM on Jul 4th 2008 by Justin Smith
7. Mark,
The internet is tired by your description because there hasn't been a great Web 2.0 idea that is able to monetize itself. YouTube? not making money. Facebook raised money with Microsoft handing over cash but does it make money on its own merits? How about Twitter? Last I read, R. Murdock is not impressed with his investment in MySpace.
Today's web darlings are still yesterday's web darlings; Google, Amazon, Yahoo all had their foot in the from the beginning of the web boom.
Posted at 9:25PM on Jul 4th 2008 by Mario Stocco
8. You're wrong on this one, Mark. The internet has been built out to a great degree but it is nowhere near reaching its potential, because a widely-used micropayments system has never been deployed. The last 10 years have been ones of relative stasis because of no micropayments, Microsoft's chokehold on the web through IE, and the rise of open source, which enables imitation not innovation. Micropayments are such a fundamental and powerful concept that they will get things going again and lead to the true monetization of content and webapps, allowing the internet to reach its real potential. If anybody thinks this is all that can be done with the internet, they have a very limited imagination.
Posted at 10:04PM on Jul 4th 2008 by Ajay
9. People who have an emotional or financial investment in making the Internet everything believe that.
Most Americans have no need for twitter. Most don't blog. YouTube is a diversion from doing real work.
No it's not a solution for everything, but still...Google has saved people so much time! I can't imagine how much I owe them for helping me find so much great information! They helped me build up a small business while I taught during the day. Sure, I paid them for help with that...but the customers they sent my way were so nice and interested. I compare them with the idiots I got from an ad in a local paper.
Posted at 10:38PM on Jul 4th 2008 by david freer
10. Disagreeing with you would be pointless, Mark. It would be as foolish as saying no one will ever need more than 64K of RAM. Technology is not limited; it is the people who use and create it that are.
The reality is, at least looking at history, the "next big thing" will use parts of "the internet" (which, is and of itself an ubiquitous concept in today's world). Telegraph lines made way for telephone lines, which carried the original networked signals to homes via modems (and later DSL). Whether the technology is wireless or wired (my personal belief is that wired technology will remain for larger enterprise level connectivity, but will slowly be replaced for home usage once the infrastructure is in place), it will share its roots with Morse, just like everything we have today does.
As for what that will be? I suspect some convergence will occur in entertainment (something more accessible to the average user than Windows Media Center, but more practical than WebTV), although as you've written before, the delivery system needs tweaking. Outside that? I don't know. I was talking about the shrinking technology phenomenon with someone today and couldn't get past the fact that I (and many people out there, I suspect) can type faster than I can speak, so the day of a keyboardless flat panel computer running a full OS is further off than people think, at least for business applications. So, I don't see that as the next frontier, at least not until a faster input mechanism can be developed.
Definitely interesting food for thought.
11. @MC
I'll take a look at the book. I think I can see how the telegraph might have caused quite a stir in its time -- even a dot com-style bubble.
But the Internet is more like the printing press than it is like the telegraph or the telephone. Most network connections are transient. But the Internet has a memory, which permits for asynchronous communication. Before the invention of writing, we relied on oral tradition to share knowledge across time and space. Before the invention of the printing, writing. Before the invention of the internet, printing. In each case, the temporal and spatial scale of decentralized coordination of human activity has increased discontinuously. In each case, new institutional designs have emerged. The printing press basically facilitated the divisions of labor that exist within representative democracies. I don't think we've had long enough yet to figure out what we can do with the internet.
The blank is what makes the Internet different from the telegraph.
Posted at 2:31AM on Jul 5th 2008 by Michael F. Martin
12. The future is already here.
Innovation takes a long time to work its way through to reach acceptance.
True innovation must first knock down the barriers of the current norm - it must get over the naysayers who fight to keep the world the same or are afraid to take a risk.
The next leap in technology has already been invented and is already being rolled out across the country.
HDTV is the new front end interface for the Internet.
Click an HDTV show and it will deposit the song choice into your iTunes account on the web.
The future is already here. Innovation just takes time to work through an industry, consumers, and finally the world. Our future is already here.
watch this 90 second news story to see how it is working today:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFAAIVheQNw
Posted at 8:56AM on Jul 5th 2008 by M
13. I think you're looking at it from the wrong perspective Mark. That's like saying we're past the "electricity revolution", or "electricity has jumped the shark".
It's whats going to built upon it.
Posted at 11:22AM on Jul 5th 2008 by Johnny Fry
14. Hi Mark,
You're talking about the World Wide Web, not necessarily the Internet.
The importance of sharing information cannot be overstated. Our culture has expanded leaps and bounds in just a few generations, mostly because of the improved ability to share our experiences and effectively communicate with each other. The printing press, telephone, radio, television, mobile devices, and now the Internet.
Think about how you used to get directions to a house 12 years ago. Or even *you* - how would Mark Cuban communicate his thoughts 10 years ago? Would you rely on press releases? Buy a television station? ;) Today it's much easier, thank you Internet.
The Internet is vastly important and will continue to evolve into a great communication tool. Of course today's big players are just a search engine, an auction site, and a book store. Clearly not the life-changing endeavors we'd hope. But then again, early television shows and movies weren't exactly stellar either.
The Internet really is a pretty remarkable tool. Give it some time and it'll grow into itself.
15. I've been thinking the same thing, Web 2.0's getting old. I'm trying to decide what the next "version" of the Web will look like, and how long it will last.
Posted at 11:41AM on Jul 5th 2008 by Brian Wilson
16. Ok so the internet is no longer "magical" and has lost the luster it has had in my eyes ever since that day when I was 12 years old and realized this thing called "Prodigy" could tell you the weather reports on your computer. The web may have downgraded into it's "utility" phase, but who is to knock utility? There has been a profound shift in the way people share information and the web and social networking are only in their infant stages of facilitating that shift. The average person does not make use of all the tools available on the web mostly because they are not aware of them. The other night I was at dinner with a group of professional colleagues, listening to them decry the confusion of having to deal with multiple instant message services (Google Talk, AIM, etc.). Their eyes perked up when I informed them that a website called Meebo could synchronize these accounts. Earth shattering in their eyes? No. Nevertheless, very useful and a further refinement in the internet as a platform for communication.
Posted at 1:42PM on Jul 5th 2008 by Matt Bilinsky
17. Wow, the post and the comments were a blast to read, although I understood only about 60% of it. But Basic brought back memories of U.T. business school, when we had to make appointments to get some time with the monster mainframe, and then use that precious time to make sure our punchcarded homework assignments worked.
Posted at 3:21PM on Jul 5th 2008 by Bob
18. The next big revolution won't occur on the desktop, but on the browser. The hardware from a desktop standpoint can run pretty much everything you can throw at it. Video games and some hardcore pro-level software are the only things that really require top end power. However, what's really choking content is our atrocious lack of true high speed bandwidth. The majority of industrialized countries have internet speeds that significantly eclipse the US's. Once you can open the pipelines and allow content to flow instantly to the desktop, you create a powerful engine for change where suddenly, it doesn't matter what your computer is, what your OS is, or what your browser is. Web apps are the next big thing, along with handheld integration. BlackBerry's, Windows Mobile, iPhone, Android, etc. are all going to be the next great frontier as the internet leaves our PCs and follows us everywhere.
Posted at 3:39PM on Jul 5th 2008 by Adam
19. For those who aren't common readers of this blog I think it's important to point something out. Mark sees his HDNet and similar ventures as direct competitors to the internet. He has posted many times about how he believes set-top boxes are potentially superior content distribution systems to internet methods such as YouTube and bittorrent. He might very well be correct on that.
But his bias against internet media often spills over to a general overreaction to the internet as a whole. To say that the internet has jumped the shark is completely over-the-top.
The potential of the internet is still immense. We are still in the infancy stages. It might change many forms to the point where it's unrecognizable and that's fine, but to suggest that we're at the end of what it is is shortsighted. The adoption of open standards is going to radically change the internet yet again. Right now we all visit various websites, use various webtools, and they are more or less independent from each other. Open standards such as OpenID
are going to change that to the point where "the internet" is like one big database where information is shared by sites.
And that's not even getting into the many other technologies that are arising, many of which are going to interface with the internet. Mobile internet is just getting its feet wet, and that's hardly a minor thing as you suggest.
Posted at 4:03PM on Jul 5th 2008 by Matthew
20. Nice reset on Crash Davis and Bull Durham at the end there. Of course, Crash would have said that the Internet is a bat, and everything a baseball. Either way, very nice.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bull_Durham
and a bad rip of the movie quote with good audio
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBfdl6hNZ9k
Posted at 9:27PM on Jul 5th 2008 by Darin
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1. I think the Desktop web is already losing ground to the mobile web. After that, it's anyone's game. Maybe DNA will be the new BASIC. That'd be a wild world to live in...
Posted at 7:54PM on Jul 4th 2008 by Nick Molnar