The return of the x-Internet.
From the Flickr of Kimmerhoo
Back at the turn of the century, Forrester, among others, were predicting the imminent rise of the x-Internet. They said:
“The Web will fade. It will be replaced by a new software paradigm…The Web is like reading a book. An executable-powered Internet is like a two-way conversation. When you go to a site in the future, the server will send you a program that will load onto your PC (or Palm, or cell phone). Now you’ve got brains at both ends of the wire, resulting in a high-IQ, interactive, valuable conversation. Work is performed at both places, greatly increasing the richness of experience, the relevancy of content, and the amount that can get done.”
Of course, they were wrong and even though the bubble created a little hiccup, web-based development continued unabated and we moved into the Web 2.0 era which, while more interactive, was still entirely a server-based model.
However, a spate of recent developments are potentially making true on those early predictions and heralding the a new wave of development which is much closer to the x-Internet model. Google Gears (to some extent), Microsoft Silverlight/WPF and Adobe Air/Flex are all set to deliver richer user experiences by allowing your PC /Mac/Phone to share some of the processing. While these developments makes a lot of sense from a usability standpoint, the inevitable format war that will follow could undo a lot of the progress that has been made in unifying web standards over the last few years.
What’s more interesting to me is that this is also a (seeming) step backwards from the strategy of creating higher level abstractions away from the underlying hardware. We seem to be moving back towards a situation where the “desktop” matters. From a strategic standpoint, this is a world that highly favours Microsoft. Working on Sun Microsystems back in the mid 90s, most of our efforts were around convincing people that “The Network is The Computer.” If the computer is still the computer, then it matters what the computer is. I may be missing something here but I sense this is a strategic blunder of massive proportions (on the side of Microsoft’s competition) that could do more to return Microsoft to dominance than any advertising acquisitions will.
Helge Tennø Says:
March 6th, 2008 at 1:50 amExcellent reference to Forrester (thx), but I find that the browser is (at present) to clunky an interface to meet with the richness of our diverse interactions when using such different tools/software as we are today.
The best solution I imagine is to remove the “one GUI to rule them all”-principle of the browser and let each operation (software with unique preference) create it’s own optimal interface and after that – open it up to server based activity. (which would be the same as allowing Keynote or Photoshop to work online).
As Forrester says: The browser is a page-by-page sequential way of browsing information, combine that with it’s lack of memory (except the back button of the browser), and the un-human way of how you communicate with it’s content (step-by-step, where everything else around us happens in motion) – we have to come up with better solutions. (Photosynth’s guardian example (show at TED) has some very interesting concepts)
I personally hope Gears, AIR and Silverlight is a step in the right direction. At the moment more exited about the possibilities than worried about Microsoft
)
Thanks again for excellent post.
Adrian Says:
March 6th, 2008 at 7:32 amI absolutely agree, I think things are going to get better for users and that’s what matters.