Opinion: We're starting to see the beginning of a whole new Web Renaissance.I have to admit, I'm feeling pretty darn optimistic these days.
Maybe it's that spring is finally in the air. Maybe it's the fact that I've got a new gig with a bunch of folks I really like and are doing great things. I'm sure it is.
But what's really got me optimistic these days is that I think we're starting to see the beginning of a whole new Web Renaissance.
Sure, sure, sure, there's been plenty of talk about Web 2.0 for a while now (and even rumblings of Web 3.0).
And while I may not totally buy into the hype of all of it, I have to admit that there's a sea change in the way that people think about the Web. And that change is going to have a huge impact on how all of us work, play, and think about the Web itself.
In fact, I'm willing to say that in the not-so-distant future, the "Web" as we know it is going to disappear. And that's a good thing.
When the Web started out, it really was simply a place to publish content. Over time, sites became more functional, allowing us to actually do rather than consume. Tools for living such as mapping sites, directories, e-commerce, e-mail, etc. started to pop up and became indispensable to our lives.
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Today, who could live without Mapquest or Google Maps? Who could live without a Web-based interface to their e-mail? Who among us, dear readers, could get buy without being able to search and buy products online? I doubt there are very many of you.
A decade ago some folks began to realize that this vision was going to happen someday. Cries of "the browser is the OS!" and "the network is the computer!" were heard over and over again during the famed "Browser Wars" between Netscape and Microsoft.
At the time, both bandwidth and processor performance weren't really at the level where either one of these predictions could come true, But they are now, and that's where we find ourselves today.
Today we're beginning to see the real fruit of the work that's been going on for over a decade to create apps that can take the place of desktop applications.
Sites like Writely (recently acquired by Google, by the way) allow us to do collaborative word processing online. Google itself is planning to provide "total storage" online, eliminating the need for a local hard drive and is on the verge of releasing a new online calendar app.
For those who want to create their own interactive apps and interaction points online, sites like Zoho are turning simple app development into a point-and-click affair and sites like Wufoo allow any schmoe with rudimentary knowledge to set up their own forms to gather information. And, of course, there's the whole Microsoft Live initiative.
In light of these (and a gazillion other nifty new things coming online), the big picture starts to look a lot more interesting.
The Web (and the Internet itself) is becoming a ubiquitous platform for information, services and interaction. More and more of what we do is going to move off of proprietary networks and platforms and onto the ubiquitous, open platform of the Internet.
That's truly why the phone companies are petrified of stuff like Skype and why the cable companies are starting to get nervous about video delivered over the Internet via services like YouTube.
They can see the writing on the wall. It may be amateur hour today, but five years from now more of us may be "watching" our "TV" on-demand directly from the networks rather than going through the cable box.
Ultimately in technology it's becoming more and more clear that closed systems can't survive.
In a future world of near infinite bandwidth, storage, and processing power, the whole structure of how we think about the Web will change.
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"Publishing" in a networked world becomes a completely different game when it becomes participatory (see MySpace and Flickr) and interlinked.
People will no longer tolerate the "one-to-many" approach of the traditional broadcast model, but instead will insist that content be delivered when and where they want it and they will want to somehow participate (whether through tagging, commenting, or simply organizing it in a way that makes sense to them) in the process.
So yeah, I'm optimistic. I'm optimistic that the potential of the Internet is being realized. I'm optimistic that the network isn't just the computer but that it's also a conversation.
I'm optimistic that we're on the cusp of finally being able to move away from walled-garden monopolies on content and applications and to an open world of innovation on a universal platform.
Call it spring in the air, Web 2.0, or just a particularly fun time browsing PopUrls. I know that we're on the brink of a whole new boom.
