The web is dead

by Yhelzon Philip

First of all I would like to start with a short explanation, when I us the term 'Web' I mean the Internet as
we experience it through our web browser (be it firefox, explored or chrome), when I say 'Internet' I
refer to every possible us of the http protocol (for example apps).

The WWW has been around for quite a while. It's in its twenties to be exact.
Along the way it changed many times, some claim evolved, some of the changes were big and revolution
like (say Google, Facebook, Twitter etc) others went unseen and undetected. One of those undetected
shifts in the essence of the Internet is happening right now, almost unnoticeable.

We all use the Web, we can't imagine our lives without it. We log in (Using our Smart Phone or Ipad)
every morning to check our Emails, we (well most of us any way :) have to have our fix of Facebook
every couple of hours (Most of us use an App), we check our RSS (App) and Twitter (you guessed it, an
App is the most common way) every single day, we call using Skype (App), we chat using Fring (app) and
listen to music using an online streaming service (App).
And after such a long day using the Internet it almost goes unnoticed that you haven't used the WEB
even once!

It's not that we dislike the Web, the main culprit is the ease with which we can use our mobile devices to
circle around using the actual web to get the stuff we need from it. So massive have been the change in
the last couple of years the average usage of the WEB as we know it (via http-port 80 to those that this
info tells them something) has been around 20% out of all Internet traffic.
Morgan Stanley (yes, the bank) predicts that within 5 years more people are going to use the Internet
via their mobile-handheld devices them with the PC.

We have to understand that while the use of goal specific apps may simplify the task at hand they
constrain our abilities to the tasks that the app designer had in mind. And so we, and our abilities
become defined by the apps we own.

In my opinion the next step will be self customizing all intelligent social and commercial apps. Those
apps may improve the quality of our social life or the price of the deals we get for the stuff we buy. But,
and it’s a big but, we will be confined, even imprisoned by the developer of the app. We won't have the
freedom to roam the Web in hope of finding the undiscovered.

Now to my conclusions, first, on the practical side of things it may be that the next big thing is going to
be a mobile application and not some new web site. On the philosophical side of things, be very carful of
over customization, personalization and simplification because if you don’t you might just loos your
freedom.
For more on the subject (and for some very interesting reading just about everything else see Wired
Magazine: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/all/1