Well, it was inevitable, although I’m hoping to reverse it for tomorrow and the next few days. I forgot about my video games and got caught up in the internet again. You know what that means: link dump! I’ll try to provide a bit of a summary so you don’t have to read it all and stuff. I just can’t not share it, that’s all. And I have stuff I want to write for you and for someone specific but I can’t do that if I write an essay about the internet, so I’ll let the guys who wrote about it already take care of that. Without further ado, today’s topic is basically The Web vs The Internet.
The Web: Your Firefox or your Chrome or your Opera or even Internet Explorer, working through your desktop, or possibly your phone, or laptop, or other somewhat mobile device. This is the HTML and the websites, the facebook and the google and all that. Increasingly, people are just using iPhone apps rather than using their computers for the easy stuff.
The Internet: The stuff behind the web pages. The ability to transfer data, being connected, the thing that gets your iPhone apps and makes them work.
So Wired has a bright orange magazine this month declaring that “The Web Is Dead.” Despite the sensationalist cover (how could I possibly avoid looking at that?), when I went online to check out the articles (while I had to look, it was very easy not to buy - sorry, guys) I found out that their true headline was “The Web Is Dead. Long Live The Internet.” Their argument is that people using iPhone apps rather than an iPhone internet browser to get what they want (facebook, twitter, RSS feeds, whatever online content) proves that The Web is over and the infrastructure of The Internet is the true innovation. I’m not sure where I stand on that. I find the debate over open innovation (open-source, free stuff) vs closed walls (careful control, paying for stuff) much more interesting than their shambling almost-an-argument about how the simple iPhone and iPad somehow disprove The Web as a thing that has value. Read what you like, judge it yourself, and carry on with your life.
The Web Is Dead. Long Live The Internet - split into two columns of “we are to blame” and “they are to blame,” which probably looks really nice in print, this article tries to go at their argument from both (?) points of view. Blame ourselves for choosing the iPhone over our PCs, or blame Steve Jobs for being a big fat greedy jerk and making the iPhone. Or something. I don’t recall this even being a debate, or there being any point of view, so this article tries to say some things but ultimately it’s probably more valuable as a source of debate than an actual article. Maybe you’ll see some gleaming diamond of an argument in there that went completely over my head after an hour spent reading other articles.
The Web Is Dead? A Debate - an e-mail conversation/argument that circles itself, develops a third head, and yet somehow continues to be engaging throughout, this debate (article?) spans a whole host of topics from “open Web” and “closed Internet” to economic factors and the inability of old-school sensibilities to thrive online. I wonder if an important (or so I assume) magazine guy is the right person to debate a paid iPhone magazine app vs a free online website paid for by advertising dollars. He wouldn’t participate in their rush to make money off of an app if he hadn’t already been disappointed with the way TV advertising ideas have failed to turn a profit online. But that’s just a small section of this; I think the core idea is the “dance” or cycle between open and closed, innovation and profit, where too much of either leads to a surge in the other. Too much open, non-profit development and you get a lot of people making money on iPhone apps. Too much closed iPhone development, you get a lot of people throwing their stuff out for free and trying new things.
How the Web Wins - amidst a radical declaration that The Web is now archaic, one man steps out to let everyone know that people are developing The Web so that it can compete with those crazy kids in the app store. He says that The Web will grow from competition, and simply by knowing someone developing a browser-based game I know he’s telling the truth. Not to mention, as a player of browser-based games, I’ve seen stuff like Ruby On Rails that would boggle the mind of a boy who grew up on HoboWars and other html driven games. It’s a quick read, but he has a point.
So there you go. You be the judge. I don’t own an iPhone, and I probably won’t for a very long time, so I’m almost entirely removed from this big debate. I still use The Web, and I will for the conceivable future. I know that a lot of people are making a lot of money with apps, but that’s just the way that it goes. I like what I’ve got going here, and I’m not going to spend a large sum of money to change that.