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Has The Internet Peaked?
Boone^ writes: "ZDNet has some commentary detailing how they believe that the Internet has 'peaked', and is now settling down. Broadband isn't providing people with interactive TVs, just a pleasant Web experience. The list goes on. One British dot-com (err .co.uk) is putting its last minute Christmas push out on paper instead of online. Is the age of vast Internet exploration over? Do we now know what we've got, what works and what doesn't, and are now beginning to refine those?"
I think that this is the only way to go. Nothing electronic ever changed as much as the internet has. Look at telephones, tv boxes, radio, car tecnology. It's time to give the internet a rest and optimize the whole www so that it will load faster :)
"Wireless : LAN
No. The Internet has not peaked. People thought the Internet peaked with Netscape 3.0 - NOT! Wait and see how invasive this thing is yet to become - esp. with IPv6 right-around-the-corner-any-time-now. In another 5 years, people may get ip address space personally asigned to them. Wouldn't that be interesting? Let's see where this ride lets off - it's only just begun...
Fawking Trolls!
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
It's just a matter of time really. At the moment most sites are still playing to the 56k crowd, so there is no real reason upgrade to broadband. As more people aim content at broadband, more people will move to broadband. As more people move to broadband, more people will create content for it.
It will happen, just not that fast. Remember the net has only been in the average persons home for a few years, it's going to be a few years more until broadband becomes the norm. And until it does sites will aim at the majority which is the 56k crowd.
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enterfornone - logging in for a change
Even if the internet has 'toped out' that dosn't mean that it is small or lacking custumers by any means. I don't know why this company feels differnt.
The statement 'the internet has peaked' is so loosely used it's not funny.
You can't ask 'has the internet peaked?', maybe 'has internet usage peaked?', but the internet in general is not something that can be determined to have peaked.
Even if the number of connections on the internet (not just the web and email) had peaked (which I storngly doubt it has) it doesn't validate a broad statement like 'has the internet peaked?'.
Besides just because all the dot comers have suddenly realised that you cann't use the internet for absolutely everything doecn't mean there won't be any more innovation as far as the internet (or web for that matter) is conerned.
That and grudge match(www.grudge-match.com) still hasn't had Mr. T in enough fights.
Theres one problem with reflecting your reality, sometimes your reality starts to reflect you.
not.
How are you market-predictors supposed to tell when something has peaked, anyway?
Just because I don't use the Internet to do consumer things does not mean it is not transforming society.
The internet is doing plenty of cultural advancement- into "b2b" where the last innovation was the shipping bill.
Way behind the scenes, the Internet is bringing just-in-time business practices to lots of firms (some of which they were NEVER meant to go to), for instance.
Also, the Internet continues to create new forums for music,, discourse, and protest.
Goat sex free since 2001
Even if the internet has 'toped out' that dosn't mean that it is small or lacking custumers by any means. I don't know why this company feels different.
While saying that the internet has "peaked" may seem a bit odd because, of course, it will continue to grow, I think this article raises a good point.
Regular growth of all sorts of observable phenomenon starts slow, speeds up quickly, and then levels off to grow more slowly. The growth curve looks like an "S" with it's ends stretched out. A tree, for example, may grow 20,000% in the year after germination, but only grow 2% in it's 20th year.
Perhaps rather than the internet itself "peaking," we might say it's acceleration of growth has passed it's max.
hello, the internet is in its INFANCY! at least on the mainstream level. i know everything is this electronic age is moving fast, but the internet has not yet peaked. is has to settle down before it expands again, true. but it will not slow down significantly until something replaces it. i remember that people thought the internet would be crushed under its own weight by 2001. people say these things without considering other possibilties, most of which are far more likely.
Death of Internet Predicted: Film at 11:30.
If it's really peaked, does this mean that the eternal September will be coming to a close?
hope so...
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Sure we North Americans are entering a phase we all know too well: we've seen it, let's take it for granted. Let's not forget that only a finite amount of the Earth's population is wired to the Net. A person who's never touched a computer will feel the same excitement we did when they first get on the Net, be that tomorrow or in 5 years.
I do feel that for us (people used to having the net) we've realized that the Net is not a saviour, it's a tool. Just like when you get a chainsaw for Xmas, you want to cut every tree down until you get bored with it. Then the chainsaw becomes a tool, you use it when you need it, for what you need it. I think the Net is reaching that point for us.
Yes.
sorry about that.
music,, discourse, and protest.
Goat sex free since 2001
Since Al Gore, the inventor of the internet, has lost the election and will be going home on January 20, 2001, apparently he'll be shutting down the internet on that day and taking it with him.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Every porn site on the Internet just climaxed simultaneously. The net has peaked.
-- Linux...find out what you've been missing while rebooting Windows NT!
The Internet maturing? With the World Wide Web 9 years in its making? Hardly. Back in '95, did anyone envision HTML 4.0?
Were there any cheezy frame-popup, Javascript-laden, scrolling-marquee, BMP-splattered websites? Any evil ActiveX sites?
As far as I recall, no.
In my opinion, the Web is decaying.
IMHO, the internet has NOT peaked and probably will not peak for many years. Growth may slow to a crawl but it will probably continue to trend upwards.
New technologies will help to continue to develop the internet. So if anything, maybe we have reached a plateau.
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." General James Mattis
What we have here is this interthingy and it's like got uh a revolution every minute no wait every second and um oh now were back to every minute see how it slows down just like um a revolution. And so people buy things on it but they buy things less than before because it's like uh spining you see, It's an ever changing evloving matrix of human dynamic activity. And now I think it's settling down more than before but different. Because everything has to change and adapt to the new order of this thingy we got right here in virtual space.
But really, don't you think that all the people that logged on to the mall are just finding out that the mall sucks and there are host of good sites and people that are more interesting than buy-my-sht.com
Cheers Andrew
Its sure supplying me with an interactive TV. I download TV shows all the time, I have every episode of Daria, Futurama and The Simpsons available to me. What else could you ask for?
The internet has reached a tangible summit readily avalible broadband access. This is by no means however a peak we've only begun to stretch the limits of this animal I hope that by the time my children are old enough to use the web I can tell them stories about having to dial into the internet, and they'll be shocked at the thought.
One idea that is being researched is the idea of "pre-fetching" pages off of the Internet, and downloading them to the user's computer. I'm participating in a research project (for college credit) that will look into the algorithms for pre-fetching, and come up with one that will allow for the fewest wasted bits in pre-fetched pages, or highest precision in guessing which pages to pre-fetch, based on user surfing habits.
Personally, I din't expect the internet to deliver an TV-like experience, that's what TV is for... as for interactive TV, that's just complicating matters, I use my television to relax, the entire point is to be enjoying a show, not anything else.
Basically I think they are expecting too much from such a small step forward. Our computers don't provide those experiences locally with all the bandwidth available from our hard disks, so why expect this experience to come true with the relatively small bandwidth the internet provides?
However with new codecs such as Microsoft's Video/Audio 8 and 3ivx, maybe it's possible, but I wouldn't expect anything too revolutionary considering what we have to work with.
To say that the internet is at its peak is silly in itself, technology will always advance. Just because the hype made people expect too much doesn't mean this isn't possible at a later time.
.sig: Open Source, Open Mind
I guess he was listening through the thin walls in the hotel room next door:
(Internet): "Ungh....Ungh....yeah broadband baby, all for you, I promise....ungh....ungh....all the porn and details on making pasta figurines too....UNGH...ungh...ungh...search engines based on outside linking...interactive Who Wants to Be a Millionaire....Slashdot Karma....it's all yours baby....Ungh ungh ungh UNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGH!!!"
(Internet): "Sorry baby...I didn't mean to peak like that. I got excited. No, don't get dressed. Cmon baby..."
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Let me give you the lowdown
The people who wrote this article have never really used real spead on the Internet, they have just used shitty @home services that are no better then modems.... Wait untill you have 900kbs under your belt then the Internet becomes a huge part of your life that enriches and makes what you do easier in ways that other people just cant get.
The internet has not "peaked", but it is "maturing". The internet may not be as "new" and "stunning" as it was in '92 (when I got my hands on a copy of Mosaic), but it's becoming a place where work, play, and learn.
So what does the future hold for the internet? More wireless technology, of course. Yesterday I was in a bookstore looking at a book. Using my cellphone, I looked up a review for the book, searched the internet for the best prices, and purchased the book for $15 less then it cost in the bookstore. Wonderful. Stunning. This is the future - not just a faster internet, but an internet that is integrated into our lives.
The internet as we know it, however, has peaked. The internet will become less and less technology oriented and more and more information oriented. It will, and has already started to, cease to be the "nerd" internet that we knew in '92. It will be the people's internet. People will forget the "coolness" factor and start figuring out that the internet can actually be useful.
I don't like the future - but as the proud owner of three palmtops, five graphing calculators, four computers (all > 600MHZ, 192MB of ram, 20GB of HDD), a broadband connection (2mbits), and 100baseT switched networking, I'm a littie biased.
Oh well, as long as I can read slashdot...
I have the feeling that the web has not peaked and it does not seem like it may peak for a couple years. Technology has to get better for the web to truly peak. I used to be a dail-up user and therefore I could only visit a certain numbers of sites because of slow loading times. Now that I am at college I can visit a lot more sites because load time is decreased. If I had an even faster connection I think the web would have peaked for me. Until the internet becomes instant it will not peak. Right now it seems that the internet will not be instant for all people in the immdeiate future. So while it may peak for some it will not peak for others until they truly experience instant internet. After someone experiences instant internet for a period of time it will eventually peak for them.
>neotope
Yes, the Internet has infact peaked. A good indication is Yahoo! porting it's services to the Minitel in France.
I don't know about you guys, but I'm firing up my old dos box, hooking up a 28.8 modem, and setting up my bbs. If this is the peak of the Internet, the decline will be dialing up my modem!
(Hint, sarcasm)
We're seeing the transition where the internet goes from "sexy" to "mundane". Remember all those girlfriends that seemed so exciting for a few weeks, then as you got to know them, the charm just...wore off? You started noticing their flaws. Reality came crushing down on all the novelty of having this new fling.
Well, that's what's happening with the internet. The novel has become trite. The truly useful stuff (knowledge bases, e-commerce, maps, phone books, etc) has just integrated itself nicely into ordinary life.
Oh, there will be all kinds of "sexy" (what a stupid way to describe it) new technologies, but, essentially, it's just a new bikini for the old girlfriend. It'll wear off too. The internet has become ordinary. No less useful, no less miraculous in it's way, it's just -- well, the thrill is gone, baby. But really, how long did anyone expect to be amazed by Flash animations and the JennyCam?
That's life. If you need everything to be new and exciting and groundbreaking every moment, you might end up a drug addict or divorced or worse.
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If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, forget 'em, because man, they're gone. -- Jack
This makes perfect sense to me. I think of myself as a realist, so in a way I share this view. We are in a time in which change is inevitable, but things will never be better tomorrow, and they were never worse yesterday. The web is going to get faster and bigger to accommodate our wants and needs, just as computers and hard drives and everything else on the planet is going to gradually improve its quality.
This doesn't mean that the quality of living is improving, for the quality of living is only a function of time (think of it this way: living in a cardboard box 10,000 years ago would have been an incredible quality of living). No, the quality of living is not improving, it is just advancing, and along with that advancement come newer, bigger requirements. And they will always be met to some degree, and everything will always advance to some degree. That is, of course, until human civilization reaches it's peak, in which case... it was nice knowing you.
But let's not talk about that - back to the internet. This is a time in which computers are getting faster, hard drives are getting bigger, the internet is gaining more useful information... Homer no longer takes twenty seconds to get his still image of Cindy, but he now takes about five minutes to get her twenty minute video. Oh yeah, that's the ticket.
Free music, free video, free information... That is what the internet is. And for that reason alone, I agree with the initial condition that the internet has reached its peak (too bad too, it's so young). Governments here and there are already trying to step in and control this, censor that, arrest him for doing that, and so on and so forth. That will get worse, I predict, but for a good cause. There will always be a stabilizing unity between the positives and negatives of the world; that goes for everything.
We can't exclude the internet from that, can we?
A few years after I graduated, a local university made waves by being the first in the nation to demand that every incoming freshman must have a computer. It was considered frighteningly drastic.
It took a few more years for every campus to run to catch the wave and install networking to the dorms.
The 1999 grads were the first out who had the "web" for their entire college experience, and where doing something as sophisticated as downloading digital audio was not just a geeky preoccupation but rather one deeply in the mainstream.
What I'm trying to say here is that the 'net hasn't even really started its peak. The masses out there aren't putting it to its test. The people with the money are still far older than anyone who grew up with the net, and many of 'em are still scared of trying to manage their bookmarks.
Without question, the net will continue to become more ubiquitous, usage will continue to increase, new applications will be found, exciting new appliances will be developed. Think of the boundaries we have yet to cross. A majority of people yet to have email addresses, for example.
A lot of people have to learn to change their behavior in order for a lot of the .com concepts to really take off, and *that* might be fair to examine. I for one would love to have my groceries delivered; but I know that people, in general, are sentimentally attached to the idea of visiting the warehouse and lugging heavy bags of stuff back to their homes.
And when major ecommerce players -- I mean MAJOR major -- still make simple mistakes in usability on their websites, we know they have a lot to learn about how to get people into buying online.
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They mean that in 100 years, it'll be lesser than it is today?? I doubt it!! All it takes is one more killer app for the internet to be taken to new heights all over again. The internet is still relatively new, its a baby internet. Just wait to see the behemoth it can grow into...
The billions of $$$ in venture capital for random web stuff has dropped off, so the excitement has waned a little.
In order to move to the next level, an order of magnitude more bandwidth is needed. Canberra (Australia's capital) is getting fibre optic to the curb, and it is expected that local businesses will offer things like video on demand (the holy grail?). It will come, things will move forward but it's going to take a bit more time. (Patience folks!).
I think the phrase "the Internet has peaked" is misleading, but the article makes a good point: the Web isn't a panacea, and in fact we've probably taken it about as far as it's going to go at this point. Perhaps it would be better to say "the Web has matured" (carefully avoiding the Web == Internet misconception).
As far as the Internet itself goes, I think it's still got a lot of development ahead of it. For all the business going on on the Internet these days, it still resembles nothing so much as a giant research project--which is reasonable, seeing as it hasn't even been around for 40 years yet. When I can call my parents in the US from the data terminal in my house in Japan over the Internet and get the same reliability and quality as a call today over the telephone network, then the Internet will be mature, or at least closer.
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BACKNEXTFINISHCANCEL
The main focus of the article is the fact that commercial sites (primarily e-commerce) are turning away from net-only sales strategies. The random nature of the web and the sheer size of it can't compete in every way with something that sits around your house all day (catalog) or something that pushes content at you without your interaction (television).
I see this "peak", if that's what you want to call it, as a sign of what the true purpose of the internet is: a vast store of information. When you walk into Wal-Mart, are you reviecing information? I don't think so... you're getting bombarded with mental cues to BUY. I doubt the managers of retail stores care at all whether you leave their enlightened. About the only place you may leave more informed is a book store, which is why Amazon is really the only e-commerce operation that's making money: it is closest to the true purpose of the net as a medium. Also, one rarely randomly shops on impulse in a book store, they seek what they are looking for. The net was not designed to manipulate your buying impulses, it was designed for the searching and retrieving of information.
Let the net "peak", maybe all of the profiteers will place their marketing where we want it, instead of leaving fliers between books in our library. It really sickens me that the only standard by which the internet is measured these days is by how much cash it can generate.
"We obviously need a new moderation category: (-1, Woo-fucking-hoo)" --Mr. AC
f you've tried DSL or cable, you'll realize that it makes the current Web much more bearable than a dial-up connection -- it does NOT, however, suddenly turn your computer into an interactive TV set. It is not the promised revolution -- it just makes for a pleasant Web experience, period.
It does turn it into an interactive radio station. TV will come.
As for the earth-shattering, headline-grabbing developments that break new ground for technology, there is lots of stuff yet to come -- just ask those guys who work on G3 telephone services, interactive television, and a few other things still percolating in the labs.
Interactive Television - I remember that. It was a BBC Department Ii worked for in 1986. They shut it down in 1989 (spun it out to a external company) because it didn't make sense as a broadcaster. Guess what, it still doesn't.
In a word "NO!"
:)
The Internet is just starting. The main problem that there are a LOT of stupid companies that have business models that won't work (IE free computers??) and compannies still don't use Open Source everywhere (yes... some people still write non-Free software). Once people get past the fact that Intellectual Property really doesn't exist (it exists but you can't hold it oversomeone like Microsoft) we can do some AMAZING stuff.
If you really want to see some cool stuff. Check out http://mojonation.com, http://freenet.sourceforge.net http://www.openprivacy.org. This is where the real innovation is going on!
What evidence is there that the net has peaked?? Its not like things have been slowing down at all... ZDNet's small part of the internet has perhaps peaked, but the rest continues to thrive and grow. Consoles are about to be connected to the net (PS2, Dreamcast, X-Box), programs like Napster are pushing a cosumer revolution, instant messenger programs are becoming as used if not more so than the telephone. How is that anything but an upwards trend?? The internet isn't an economic stockmarket like some corporations would like it to be. It doesn't "crash".
It's uncanny how people associate the Net with the Web. Two different things altogether (although one is required for the other). Maybe the WEB has reached a potential peak, but the Internet is still a maze of possibilities, much more so than TV's and Phones.
Detroit (AP) - With the widespread adoption of the new Ford Model T, in this, the year 1920, it has become clear that most of the issues surrounding the automobile have been addressed in the past twenty-five years of innovation.
For instance, many people are reverting back to walking to go to the neighbor's house, or to simply get some exercise. The automobile has gone from being a novelty to being integrated into the everyday lives of people, and some question whether any new technological advances can be made. Indeed, recent thermodynamic studies question whether the inherent inefficiencies in automobile engines make the pursuit of such advances worthwhile.
People who drive automobiles are generally happy with the way they use them, as intracity and other localized transportation avenues, and demand for other uses for automobiles is dwindling. Despite some fringe elements calling for a countrywide "interstate" system of roads, trains and boats, with their greater hauling capacity and more reliable operation, will probably squeeze out any such ideas of mass cargo transportation by road.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
I have to agree with this on some points. I have never belived the internet is everything for everyone as it has been told by many people. I also don't see the mass migration of brick and motor to e-commerace continueing (or nessasary).
Hmm, you know, maybe one day the Internet will be once again owned by computer geeks and not corprotate retailers.
With the amount of high-speed access be available to the end user right and Ipv6 coming out soon the Internet is bond to do some really cool stuff. I think the Internet will explore newer avenues that we have not every thought of yet. It seems that about every year or two something new happens on the net. Last year it was X-MAS shopping online now it is stock trading. Who knows what will happen?
Like many others have already commented I seriously doubt it. I do think that with the current infrastructure, meaning mostly the backbone lines, we have taken this thig about as far as it can go. In order to do more with the internet we need the ability to move what would be by todays standards pretty huge amounts of data. I am still sitting on the fence as to weather Internet 2 will be able to move the amount of data required to give streaming digital TV to the masses. And even with the fastest backbones in the world the last-mile cables into everyones houses has a long way to go, and current broadband technologies have a snowball's chance in hell of being able to handle digital streaming televion. Current developments in optronics are giving us the ablility to move that kind of data, but the race to rework the last mile seems to be between wireless broadband (most likely cellular and satellite) and fiber to the home. I haven't heard of a cellular solution that pushes near enough data to be able to move the internet forawrd in any major way in terms of speed, but makes large steps in making internet connections availbile pretty much anywhere in major cities (I don't see this happening in rural areas too much). Fiber to the home provides enough speed, but a much larger capitial investment on the part of the telecos. Who will win is pretty hard to call right now, but if anything is certain here, it is that the internet is not even close to peaking.
I only post twice a year, who needs a sig?
The internet is a constantly evolving beast. We will not see a peak or finish per se. We are just begining to poke at the age of distributed computing. Right now we have P2P file sharing but i guarentee we will be seeing much more of this distributed architecture in the future. Think plan 9 and other yet to be thought of systems. The internet's biggest success won't be taking our old technology( i.e. radio, tv) and putting it on top of it, but creating a new interactive highly connected system which we haven't even thought of yet.
Time is Change.
Strictly speaking, no the 'net hasn't peaked. Usage will continue to grow, and new services will come to pass.
But the hype has definitely peaked. Growth has dropped to a steady pace. What I find is that after having had broadband for a while now, I'm still surfing the same sites in the same way that I was three years ago.
Broadband content? Yawn. What can the net offer that 300-channel cable doesn't? Not much A little more variety, video on demand, but not much better than PPV.
Interactive TV? Who the hell wants it? Some folks are really into Netmeeting or CU-SEEME, but they're really just a niche. They'll become a bigger niche, but still a niche.
Voice over IP? A nice improvement for businesses, maybe, it allows people to take their business phone number home. Sort of like call forwarding.
Wireless? Yeah, nice, but how is wireless e-mail going to change our society? Everybody I know already has e-mail, I send 'em a message, and they answer later. No need to for continuous mobile access.
Wireless Voice-over-IP? Sounds like a cell phone to me.
Wireless video? Sounds like TV.
Might be nice to do comparison shopping or product research on a Palm Pilot while I'm at the mall. But it won't be a drastic change.
So the article makes a good point, even though the headline is sort of overstated (and what good headline isn't?). Internet growth will continue, but it will be incremental. Most of the Killer Apps are already in use. To the extent that the 'net can change society, it's pretty much already happened. As good a sign as any is the rash of dot-com failures; late-coming investors and entrepreneurs have already found out the hard way that the exciting part of the revolution is behind us.
To me the internet hasn't "peaked" until it can support a totally immersive networked virtual reality environment capable of supporting teledildonics in real-time with believable realism. Then we'll know we're getting somewhere. :^)
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If the Internet has peaked, what comes next? That's easy. After the ideo-mythological age of the Internet has passed, new opportunities arise to seek out new ideas and goals. Let's try to think bigger than DSL, people. How do we take a steaming, unsorted pile of inforubbish and make something useful? That is the essence of life isn't it? Making something out of nothing? Out of entropy, rises order, no? It's like Ben Hogan said. The answers are in the dirt.
I am not a lawyer.
I agree with the author, but the word "Peaked" is probably not the best word. I would say more "expectations about the (commercial) internet have finally come down to earth" or "people are finally realizing that the internet is just another tool, not the second coming of {insert dead deity here}."
If you don't have anything nice to say, say it often.
- Ed the Sock
However, I strongly believe that the media and the marketing of available technologies drives the ebb and flow of interest. If the media stresses that we've "peaked" and are now in a "slow-down period", this will calm the excitement and interest that many of the not-as-savvy users have.
It's a pretty simple concept: hype the internet and associated technologies, and people will stay excited and interested. state the (alleged) fact that the peak has been reached, and people will calm down and not be so avid to jump on the technological bandwagon, so to speak.
"I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein
The biggest barrier to the continued growth of the Internet will be the cost of hosting and the low payoff of advertising. A majority of the internet with real quality and personal expression is supported mainly by advertising dollars. These sites have a danger of dropping off of the planet, despite high viewership, simply because Internet advertising isn't as lucrative as once thought. If we had the ability to host from our own homes, through our standard broadband internet connections, then... the internet would really take off... of course, you'd have to put up with more crap, but those true creative quality sites will be even better diamonds in the ruff.
Because you can't, you won't, and you don't stop...
A strange thing happened to me the other nite. My fiance and I were trying to decide where to go eat. We finally thought of a place, but wanted to call ahead to see if it was still open. I went to yp.yahoo.com as per usual to look up the number.
:), but this access to information has become a routine and important part of my life. I really like the idea of "everyting in one place". Problem is, that place is at home. I can only store a very small cache of what I want to know in my palm IIIe, and i have to manage that manually and ahead of time. Already I want to get it upgraded to 8 megs so i can use the king county map (1.3mb for low res version) from http://www.mapopolis.com
;)
Problem is, I had forgotten that my DSL had been down for about 20 minutes, and was still down.
What is strange about this is that i felt helpless. I didn't even know where in our apartment the phonebook was. Not to mention the huge distaste that entered my mind in having to guess which part of the stupid fucking book that the place would be listed.
I can usually have the phone number to a place in under 10 seconds via yp.yahoo.com. That includes the time to hit ctrl-N, manually type in yp.yahoo.com, and then manually set focus to the input box for what i want to look up.
Comparatively, using a phonebook seems about as appealing as with a sandblaster.
Last evening I totally forgot that the us presidential candidates were giving their victory/concession speeches. At like 3 am when i remembered, i simply went to cnn.com and was able to read the full text of both speeches. At no point did it even enter my mind to go check C-span or one of the tv news channels to see if i could find out what was said.
I've only lived in the pacific northwest for a few months, so I still don't know where all the different sections of town are geographically, or where some of the best places to go are. The streets here are great and easy to navigate on the east side of the sound, but in seattle proper there are quite a few streets that make no sense at all.
Yet Maps.yahoo.com is accurate about 95% of the time out here. I religiously check it before I decide to go to a new specific place. Even when I take my weekend drives, I get a large overview map of the area to sort of guage what direction I should go in for the kind of mood im in (twisty roads, mountain views, etc).
I hate to sound like a yahoo commercial
When i have ubiquotous access to everything I want to know from anywhere in the country, we'll be making good progress.
Next, when the interfaces I use all behave in a consistant and intuitive way, no matter where I am or what device I am using - we'll be making good progress.
When ATMs and payphones are a thing of the past, and instead i can walk into something like an imap/cybercash/whatever booth and be confident that i am accessing and manipulating my data securely, that will be a good start.
Once I dont need to use these booths because we have a pervasive wireless cloud that is even more convenient, then we'll be making good progress.
Networks will make all of these things happen, and probably sooner than we all think. They wont be cable TV networks, and they wont be telco networks. The most adaptible and pervasive network in history is the logical choice to build all of these sorts of things on.
There's no way the internet has peaked
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
There has been little to no improvement in the user experience of commercial web sites. Things like customer service, order fulfillment, information architecture, usability, and privacy have generally not improved at all in the last five years -- and they were pretty shitty to begin with. It's the year 2000, and I still see well-funded dotcoms with unusable navigation and time-wasting splash pages. It's the year 2000, and I still get spam from most of the companies I've ordered a product from.
I was more optimistic at first, telling myself that eventually companies would realize the importance of user experience, but I'm starting to think that there's a poisoning of the waters going on. There are a lot of surveys that indicate that web users have an extremely low trust of web sites in general. And it might be very difficult for one individual web site to change that tide. A possible short-term trend, then, might involve a massive die-off of commercial web sites, followed by a period where new entrants will have to work ten times as hard on user experience, just to get over user suspicion.
Of course, if you look at the web in non-commercial terms, it's pretty successful. Personally, I find it remarkable that I can get a quick answer to most any narrowly defined question in a matter of minutes: I go to google, type in something like "sake temperature FAQ", and get almost instantly pointed to the quick answer I need. Maybe that's not the buy-everything-online future predicted in the tech-business press. But maybe life isn't just about buying shit.
Look at the most recent groundbreaking consumer technology: Napster spawned thousands of users (and hundreds of Slashdot stories) by writing an entirely new protocol that has nothing to do with the web. You could make the case that innovation on the web will slow down now, since there's less new ground to cover. But there's still a lot of ground to be covered by writing entirely new protocols for applications that the Web was simply never intended to support.
If you wanted to, you could even make the point that the web and e-mail were killer apps for the internet as a whole. If you'd created Napster five years ago, its impact would've been marginal. But because everybody had been hooked into the network because of all these grand predictions of an web-based future, Napster had a much bigger user base to start from.
Do domain names matter?
Read the sci-fi novel "Distress" by Greg Egan, which has a wonderful vision of future networking, wireless and video tech as a subplot.
isn't a peak, it's businesses collectively going back to the drawing board to try and figure out how to make money off of the Net. So far, and with the exception of the porn industry, only a few have pulled this off.
Personally, I hope they never figure it out. The minute they do the average surfer is toast. If anyone thinks for a second that their privacy would be protected in the face of a fat profit, they're seriously mistaken. Once the formula is figured out, they'll use the Net to track everything we do with impunity. No politician in their right mind would speak out against a large profit margin to protect our rights.
What we need to do is keep the hype going. Let them think that the answer is right around the corner, when it really is just one large circle. For if the know they can never make a profit, they'll pull out entirely, leaving a pretty barren Net.
Wouldn't you agree that there aren't going to be any new truly innovative applications for the Internet now that e-mail and the web are popularized, unless and until a truly new idea comes along?
I am not a lawyer.
Maybe the web has peaked, or maybe not- My first thought was at the web peaked years ago, but I can't really think of any specific time, which maybe suggests that it hasn't peaked yet after all.
The Internet definately has not peaked.
Just look at P2P. Napster use is huge, even though it's a very single-use system. And there is lots more development that can be done with P2P. I think we've just seen the beginning there.
And who knows what will be the next thing after P2P?
People assume the Internet == WWW. Even people who know better make that mistake once in a while, if only briefly. But we do know better, right?
Has the internet peaked? It seems to me, the web has peaked in the form that the .coms currently envisage. There are far too many sites out there just like the lastminute site that are just brochures for the company. That's been said before and so has "content is king". But it is undoubtedly true. Recently, I needed to check some settings for my hi-fi, which I found easily on the yamaha site. That, to my mind is the future of the web. Most information created by companies now that is available in dead-tree format was created on computers, and that's what I want to see on the web. Not some pretty page designed by a jumped up brochure designer.
So, my take: web brochures are dying... maybe we could think about getting real information on here.
not_cub
q='echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"';s=\';b=\\;echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"
I think that the article may be close to the truth, at least, as far as it relates to the .com's and such out there.
however, I think that the internet is still vastly growing, its just going to go in a different direction now.. I think that direction will be integrating our every day appliances in our household to talk to the various nifty things out there.. (of course then we'll have to put up with ovens that talk about the latest betty crocker recipe, and microwaves that talk about the new hot pocket flavor)
-- MrMud
If you've tried DSL or cable, you'll realize that it makes the current Web much more bearable than a dial-up connection -- it does NOT, however, suddenly turn your computer into an interactive TV set. It is not the promised revolution -- it just makes for a pleasant Web experience, period. There's certainly not enough here to spark a new revolution -- yet.
I guarantee that if everyone had cable or faster, and CD burners, once people learned how to use them, no one would buy CD's on a regular basis again. Not to mention movies. Or the endless possibilities of something as well crafted as freenet. I would call that a revolution. I am just waiting until there is a moviegalaxy.com.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
About the only place you may leave more informed is a book store, which is why Amazon is really the only e-commerce operation that's making money: Amazon is losing money like Bill Gates with a hole in his wallets. They are running out of capital and probably will have to shut down in March or so.
--hongpong.com
Anyway, the quote was from the head of the US patent office, around 1890. He said "Everything that can be invented, has been."
His point was basically, "We are seeing a decrease in patent applications. This must mean that we are running out of ideas".
The internet, the inter-networking of computers from around the world to allow communication, is of course in it's infancy. Remember that there is a whole generation of people growing up now who 'take the internet for granted.'
Most of my friends, (about age 25), look at the internet as a secondary source. For movie listings, they call the theater, and if the line is busy, then check the net. To this generation, and older, the Internet will probably only reach a certain level of acceptance. The ideas on what to do with it, and the success of those ideas will be limited by that factor. (Yes there are exceptions, and some people/groups will use it more, but I am talking about mean usage)
The coming generation(s), however, will not be so hindered. I believe that while the current boom may be fading, it will eventually grow to be a completely integrated part of day to day life for the average human.
I think people have a lot clearer picture on what works and what does not work. If you have a great product, sell it cheaper than the stores, offer free or not outrageous shipping -- then the sky is the limit. (I had a much nicer experience with my online holiday shopping the last 2 years than I did fighting the mobs at the mall)...On the other hand if you are going to petition $40 million VC, go public, and yet have no business model or viable product....I think people are starting to realize that maybe the internet is not the place for that. (Now only if they would realize that people are getting very sick of the flashy banner ads...hell it looks like a Nascar race through a trailer park on most sites these days....hell, I would be more likely to click on a well versed text based hyperlink add than some god awful animated gif that gives me motion sickness..google has the right idea.)
Bottom Line: Anyone who sees a future in charging money for 1's and 0's will most likely go broke searching for the almighty dollar. People who use the internet as an alternate store front for their already successful business -- or fringe product, they will have a better go.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
I mean if you look at technology like say the TV it was going to change the world. We were going to have virtual 'town meetings' on the TV. We would be taking classes over the TV. TV was going to change it ALL. -- Well it didn't do everything and it did find its place; initaly as an entertainment media and possibly serving more of an educationional role.
The same is going to happen to the Net, Wireless, and what ever is next. It will start out being the solve all fix all but really it will just find its place and do what it does well.
The Net is a media for communication -- a very cool and personal favorite of mine but still just a media. It does some things well and others not so well ... the same applies to print, telephone, fax, email, tv, movies, etc.
Web sites and the like are just finding their place in the grand scheme of things.
No. IPv6 address space is MUCH MUCH larger than IPv4. It's very very different. It isn't deliminated by dots, rather by colon's, and there are QoS and priority concerns built in this time (so that your pr0n and spam move at a lower priority than something more important.) It's 128bit, and is SO large a space, we could assign an IPv6 number to every stoplight in the world, and not run out of addresses.
Fawking Trolls!
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
Unfortunately the problem seems to be general confusion over what the internet is and is to be. There has been a lot of concern over security but that seems to be falling to the wayside as more and more sites are becomming more nad more secure. There has also been a lot of problems with the whole information wants to be free philosphy because a lot of people seem to think this is only true to a point. That is they think -- sure free, but not how to make bombs or information on security bugs. Finally there is the entire entertainment aspect that was supposed to change the internet -- mp3's streaming media, etc... However, more and more of these issues are settled then the confusion will subside -- for good or bad. But, until the courts decide the issues, there will be some confusion.
Recent reports have indicated that books and magazines may have reached their peak. Sources inside many libraries have acknowledged the fact that indeed the stacks are full.
When asked if anything was going to be done about this problem, local librarian Mrs. Johnston replied, "Well, we've been in contact with the various authors, and we really feel it's time to cut back production in the best interests of libraries everywhere."
No doubt this anouncement has brought shock and dismay among the frequent library users. One man interviewed asked why the libraries couldn't simply build larger facilities, or archive to microfiche. His opinion was obviously way out in left field and has no place in a well researched piece on the expansion of information.
This reporter wonders if perhaps even the expansive Internet will hit the crunch point when we just can't cram another domain on the shelf.
I know this is a useless, "Me, too", kind of post but the idea that the 'Net (or even the Web) has peaked is just a tad premature. It would be like saying that air travel peaked with the Wright Brothers.
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If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
I'll buy that the WWW has peaked, or rather, plateaued temporarily.
As for the Internet, that network we all use, it continues to grow and get better and better, and we continue to find better ways to use it.
It just hasn't met the media's idea of an ideal network, where super high definition content can be sold to everyone at once.
But the network, as an exercise in networking, is wildly successful, and continues to grow.
Perhaps the number of end users coming online has somewhat dropped.. but who cares.
There are currently way too many job search and resume posting sites. No one posts their jobs on more than 2 or 3 of them (most only 1). How many places do you post your resume? The whole job hunting process is hurt by the over 200 job sites, most of which are horribly programmed. You have to search so many places just to be sure you have all bases covered. Since recruiters and hiring managers probably won't make an extensive search, you have to splatter your resume everywhere to be sure you don't miss an opportunity.
Time for some web site shake outs, and some more dot-com-bust stories.
But maybe, just maybe, as the rapid growth levels off, there might be a little more emphasis on getting it right. I hope business and commerce stays, though I'll be glad to see stupid sales people and idiotic marketing go away.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I can tell you that every day, new people get on the internet and decrease the signal to noise ratio. My grandfather just got an AOL account, for instance, and promptly forwarded me every bad joke in the book.
The concept of "spam" is apparently new to him.
Rate this as you please.
When this article askes if the internet has 'peaked' it seems to be making three statements.
1. That the internet is now a mature rather than an emerging market.
AND
2. That people Have a pretty good idea of what the internet is all about and what it can offer.
3. That people are increasingly beginning to see (the internet's) limitations and shortcomings.
I agree with the third statement. I strongly disagree with the first two.
As the article mentioned, the web is no longer universally hyped.
But the web is still an emerging market. One way of judging the rate of progress in a particular market is by looking at the obsolescence curve that a particular product has. How big is the gap between the time a product is invented and the time it becomes obsolete. The gap is huge in some areas; soap making, textiles etc. These products try and differentiate themselves through advertising and brand loyalty and similar techniques, or else they try and carve out a particular price niche.
The gap from cradle to grave is still quite small in relation to 'the web/internet' (whichever you choose). Companies are judged on the basis of their merits ( or at least their perceived merits), and innovation is a constant requirement.
Businesses are beginning to learn the web's limitations. And yes, venture capital has trickled off.
But I find it difficult to believe that anyone really has a firm grasp on the possibilities of the internet. Hardware continues to improve. Bandwith continues to increase, particularly for high end applications. (look at Ohionet, which is going to be putting gigabytes of satelite information online). Likewise, tracking of individuals and their habits will no doubt improve. I don't believe the possibilities of distributed computing have even begun to be truly explored, and artificial intellegence is as yet in its infancy.
This article reads like an IBM executive turning down the possibility of producing the first Xerox machines because 'we already have carbon paper'. There were a lot of people out there who wanted the web to become a brighter shinier version of somthing that they already owned; TV. Instead, it is becomeing somthing quite different. The fact that the web is not becoming TV does not mean that the internet has stopped evolving. But the possibility of obsolesence for anyone in the tech field is still a looming threat, which means that the web will continue to buck many of the trends displayed by a mature market like coke and pepsi trying to differentiate nearly identical products through brand loyalty.
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It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Increasing bandwidth does make online games like Quake, etc more playable for more people. However, it's kind of "more of the same". No new revolutions yet like email (see other slashdot story).
Moz.
see a Text Widget
Does this mean that when it says that it's "all free", it really is?
I think there are at least two peaks: growth and quality and they occur at different times. Most would agree that the quality peak for slashdot has long since passed, while the growth/number of users peak is still to be reached (although I don't have any statistics at hand).
The same goes for the internet... right now you see way too many clones and little really new stuff. The fact that the number of users isn't increasing rapidly doesn't worry me at all.
Moz.
see a Text Widget
Gore never said what most people think he did. He was taken way out of context.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
Peaked already, huh. Well, I guess it'll only be a year or so before "The Internet is Dead." Let's see, which brilliant revolutionary will declare it first... Bruce Sterling, John Dvorak, or Jon Katz? Anyone want to start a pool? Internet is dead everyone! Throw it away along with your obsolete PCs.
... but ARPANet sure has peaked. Hell, there's a Netscape Now! 3.0 button on their page!
hoser: Slashdot reader since 1987.
Andreas Pfeiffer, the author of the article, states:
By now, we have a pretty good idea of what the Web is all about and what it can offer.
This makes as much sense as kissing some girl on the playground in second grade, and looking at wedding rings the next day.
If you've tried DSL or cable, you'll realize that it makes the current Web much more bearable than a dial-up connection -- it does NOT, however, suddenly turn your computer into an interactive TV set. It is not the promised revolution -- it just makes for a pleasant Web experience, period. There's certainly not enough here to spark a new revolution -- yet.
So the web is not a revolution until it is like TV? Does anyone think this is a bit backwards?
And on a usability level, the Web is evolving less and less. We are refining, of course, and Web sites are getting better -- but there will be no more quantum leaps here, either
That's it. No more ridiculious statements like this. Your speaking license is revoked.
By implication, this also means that whatever hasn't exploded on the market yet will probably take a long time to go significantly beyond its current levels of market adoption, at least in relative terms.
What?
It's just that -- little by little -- the Web is becoming a mature market, and as such
The web has only be popularized in the last five years, and only become truly mainstream in the last two. How is this mature? It took us, what, 20 years to get past punchcards?
What if the market out there just was becoming a little bit bored with all that overhyped Internet excitement?
Again with this stuff. Maybe the baby boomers will become less interested (which I doubt, but let's play "what if"), and go back to TV. But despite that, their kids have grown up on the internet/web. My friend's son had his own computer by the time he was two. Computers are an integral part of his life, in the way that everyone else thinks of cars, phones or credit cards.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Doesn't "peaked" imply that from here on it's downhill? I seriously doubt that will be the case. Shouldn't we really be debating about whether or not things are/are about to level off?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I'm using the Internet, all the time. I order shit online, I talk to my relatives all the time... what's "peaking"? I watch TV on TV and go outside into the real world when circumstances warrant. Let it grow!!
People are still innovating with the mediums of movable type and oil paint. Drawing breath should not be mistaken for peaking out.
i don't know. didn't read the article yet. i see around me that internet has lost it's "NEW AND SHINY GOT TO SEE WHAT'S IT'S ALL ABOUT" -tag, therefore slowing down the growth of internet a bit. which i think, is good. We might get a little less crappy websites and trolls. or at least that's what i hope... :) what a optimist i am..
ound the message used repetitively over and over still nothing grows silen
The web is not the Internet. As much the online experience has become synonymous in grandma's and marketriod's vocabulary as "clicking through the net", the Web (as one must recall) is just one interface (and not a particularly versatile one at that) of the potential of the Internet. Back in the day, when the average user was expected to be familiar with a variety of applications residing on top of the network- telnet, FTP, usenet, IRC, ICB, MUDs, MUCKs, etc. etc.
.net and espeak are a step in the correct direction, but have been unfortunately weighed down in bureacracy and corporate greed to really qualify as engineering success stories.
.commerce peaking out- give it time. The *real* applications are not in things like server side streaming media for movies and crap (leave that to television)- it's in the ability for people to put up their own servers and have the bandwidth to do make their own sociological and technological experiments. Speaking as a developer, the applications have onlys started to be developed, because broadband has only been around cheaply in markets outside of the Bay Area for about a year at most.
.com model, again, is just training wheels for the "end-user's" of the economy (so to speak) to gain much more configurability.
The WWW quickly reached a hegemony in the interface mindshare of humanity because of it's ease of use, ease of creation, and simple to grasp architecture. However, due to the very nature of the web, we are quite limited in our capabilities of computing and indeed in some senses have taken several steps back as information and computational systems of all types are attempted to be stuffed into the browser paradigm.
From a computational paradigm, we can at best emulate a finite state automata through the web experience, and at worst, a static graph through server space. This is not to say that the web is a bad thing (quite the contrary). While much of the functionality of a standalone computer can be duplicated through the web, the standards engineering required to acheive the synergetic applications gained by distributed computing have yet to be acheived on such a scale as hypertext.
What are some of the distributed applictions? Agents to broker transactions, internet-wide computation, digital cash, massively parallel gaming environments, virtual reality, remote experience processing, ubiquitous computation and augmented environments... The list can go on and on. Some of the above have been attempted and are working quite well on a small scale. However, no matter how hard you attempt to push it, technologies such as browser plug-ins, Java, server side processing, etc. is just not going to catch on enough for any of the above to have an impact on society. Some of the emerging standards, such as XML- and broker systems such as
However, it is only a matter of time before a more flexible series of standards and user interfaces catch on. If and when they do catch on, the planet will continue in exponential transformation.
The Web is the training wheels for humanity- it is an interface that allows the old generation to participate in the current technologies, while building infrastructure for the real change that is yet to come with the (more computer savvy) generation in the next 10-15 years. Remember, all the Internet is is a patchwork of computers that all run on IP! The intelligence is in the application, not the protocol! You can't make a judgement on the future of the network based on one application.
As far as arguements for broadband not taking hold, and
Finally, the real commercial prospects of the Internet have not even begun to be touched- but will in the next year. Why? Because of the expiration of patents on Diffie-Hellman key exchange, and more recently, RSA public key algorithm. These incredibly useful algorithms allow for what is actually the real revolution waiting to happen- its not B2C, B2B or even P2P- its consumer to business and consumer to consumer. So far, online transactions have had chokepoints muddled down with credit card agencies, governments, and other nasty no-goodniks. When the common public realizes that they have the ability to securely conduct their own contracts, transactions, and money exchange- *especially* if that exchange is untaxable- then the web and the economy is going to be due to an overhaul at unprecedented levels since our experience will be more and more realtime and more and more "frictionless". The traditional
And in the end, THAT is the promised revolution. It is not interactive television, or just another tool for the passively bored and yuppified consumer. Television is dead, and let it's control structure and mind manipulation be dead. The promised revolution is the ability for the individual to act on a global scale and to have control, self-governing, and creativity on a scale that has not yet been realized. The Internet is all about freedom- so much of humanity has lived without it for so long, we have difficulty imagining the applications when it comes along.
> they believe that the Internet has 'peaked', and is now settling down.
Yeah, JenniCam provided an opportunity for the whole internet to peek.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This story appeared in the London Evening Standard a few weeks ago. Bear in mind though that this is the UK where anything geek related is considered very uncool.
This is phenomenon happens with every new technology, especially computer-related ones. You have an initial wave of faddishness and starry eyed optimism, full of promises and hype. It's especially helpful if people think they can make money off it. Then, inevitably, the dreams don't pan out and you wind up with a big downturn, with everyone spelling gloom and doom and spouting that it'll never work, it's peaked, no one is interested, etc. Basically sour grapes because not as much money was made as was predicted. Then, again inevitably, people cool off and return to the original idea with newly realistic expectations, and a happy middle ground is reached wherein the technology lives up to its potential and delivers what it should.
It happened with video games, it happened with satellite TVs, it happened with personal computers (more than once that one), and it's happening now with the web. The Web is overhyped and overmarketed. Home users on 56K are tired of the crappy surfing experience, and businesses are discovering that having a Web presence isn't that trivial to do and doesn't rake in the dough they thought it would. So the big boom is over, but the Internet isn't going away. After the dust has settled and people's expectations become more realistic, the Internet will fade into the background -- it will become a ubiquitous part of everyday life, like the telephone, cable TV, and everything else we take for granted now but was initially hyped as the Next Great Thing.
Some e-commerce sites have made some fundamental mistakes, a lot of people have got burned, so what? Most of those that made mistakes, saw the internet as the answer without really asking "what is the question?".
.gov is pushing the internet as the answer to everything but it isn't. It is a useful tool and if used wisely, it is a powerful resource. It is not the answer to everything though and anyone that sees it as such will suffer.
Our
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
This is Cheshire's ATM Paradox
ATM's big feature is guaranteed quality of service. When you set up a TCP/IP connection, the Internet does not reserve network bandwidth for you to guarantee that your data will not suffer network congestion or loss. ATM does offer guaranteed reserved bandwidth. This is its big advantage.
Or is it? If you reserve bandwidth for one user, then you have to refuse to let anyone else use that bandwidth. Everyone always talks about reservations in the context that you are the one who gets the bandwidth and it is everyone who is refused. What about when you are the one being refused? Reservations suddenly doesn't seem so wonderful any more, do they? The only way to make sure no one is refused service is to engineer your network so that you have enough bandwidth for everyone -- but if you have enough for everyone then why do they have to keep making reservations? That's the ATM paradox.
This is a subset of Cheshire's law of NetworkDynamics
The net is still far too slow. It wont peak until everyone has a connection thats about 2000 times faster, so you can download uncompressed audio/video. And phone calls.
Maybe a local peak but certainly not an absolute one - just like the stock market 'peaked' last March or so and and is off that peak, that does not mean the stock market is finished and done for like it's doomed and everyone is going to pull all their cash out and stuff it in their bed. Off peak periods are great opportunities to use the lull in business to polish up the interface and user experience, and build up lots of server capacity, fault tolerance and get ready for another wave (hint about public retail: "they all come at once", or as Yogi Berra put it, "that place (restuarant) is so busy nobody goes there anymore").
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
The internet will never peak! It's one big climax that continuously refines itself...
- if you love something, set it free; if it doesn't come back, hunt it down and kill it
I haven't turned on a TV set in over a year. Yet I haven't missed an episode of southpark, Startrek Voyager, Dark Angel, the Dune miniseries, and anything else I cared to watch. I watched it all on my computer. My... interactive TV.. if you would. Granted, its not the medium that the future version is hyped to be. Its not as convienent as Tivo for the average consumer, although for me it fits right into my regular tasks so I notice no inconvienence on my part. And yes, its probably not 100% legal.
However, I can tell you that there are NO technical limitations WHATSOEVER that prevent this type of interaction. The laws of the marketplace, copyright laws, marketing and advertising issues are the reasons why interactive TV over broadband hasn't taken off yet. Its NOT for lack of interest. But it will have to compete with a television set for convienence of use, and with cable in pricing.
Also, remember that this does not have to be STREAMING media. You need not limit the quality of your playback to the lowest common denominator. Let your customers download the program they wish to watch. Harddrives as a reusable storage method are quite reasonably priced. Once downloaded, the customer can watch it whenever he/she wants and can keep it as long as they can store it. Don't be sneaky trying to force individual payments for each download. Just charge a flat monthly fee for the service.
Will there be blatent piracy? Certainly. There is now. Nothing will change except that you might be able to sell me a service that I'm currently getting for free because you don't offer it. The technologies will emerge regardless of what you choose to do about them. You have a choice here, you can ride the wave when it comes in or get caught in a wake and drown. Napster is as popular as it is not because people want to steal money from artists (yes, I know the argument about that), and not all of them are just looking for freebies. It exists because the music industry refused to implement such a service early on when they could have had a lot more control over its use and revenue possibilities. Instead they chose to hold onto their old ideals and they completely missed the opportunity of a lifetime.
And so the internet grows on. And its not growing any slower. Just because the hype has died down does NOT mean that its leveling out. Hype isn't always the best form of motivation anyways. Internet stocks didn't crash because the an internet based economy is a flawed concept. They crashed because the companies behind those stocks were based mostly on hype. They weren't created to develop services, they were created to keep the hype alive. When the hype died down, the investors tarried, the stock market slumped and everyone suddenly got nervous and got out. As a result, the linux stocks took a bit of a beating, not because they were conceptual hype (although some were/are), but because a lot of their revenue was from other dot.com companies that WERE based on hype and therefore some of their market ceased to exist.
And don't forget. The web != the internet. They are certainly related, but all the web really is is a single internet based service. The internet is 3 times older than the web. Services have "peaked" before and all but died out, to be replaced by something more interactive, useful and/or visually pleasing. The internet itself still grows on. My interactive TV has NO involvement whatsoever with the "web" and its unlikely that it ever will.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
We wont even realize the full potential of the internet for the next 25-30 years, decades after IPV6 allows for an enormously larger amount of address space (2^128). It will be a mere 10-15 years before the DoS kiddies can burn down your house because you took their IRC nick. I personally will never own an internet-compatible toaster oven, however readily availible they will be in the future.
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This reminds me of a french saying I once heard "reculer pour mieux sauter" ... take a step back to make a better jump.
That might be the phenomenon that the author is trying to describe? A seemingly slowdown of emergence of new technologies or the halt of the maturing of existing technologies.
There is one given though, Time will tell us what is happening now.
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Full Time Idiot and Miserable Sod
Full Time Idiot and Miserable Sod
Nothing is real but the pain
My older brother is much bigger and juicier than me, why don't you eat him instead?
(Translation for those who don't know fairy tales: Score: -1, Troll)
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Xenu loves you!
A long time ago the Internet transfered data as text. Web links etc.
Graphic images were in (now obsolete) X11 formats.
I rember a friend predicting modems would get fast enough that people could transfer graphics instead of going with a text experence.
At the same time he made this prediction I was working with a BBS that wanted to support Rip Script a simplifyed graphics protocal for 2400 baud dial up.
More bandwith did not give us better graphics but worse web pages and lazy design.
Now we should face facts.. The Internet isn't going to improve with bandwith.. It improves with better software and newer protocals.
Someone on IRC was bitching becouse she had to use a JAVA applet to get on IRC.. It seems her cable provider desided to block all ports but port 80 efectivly cutting off everything but the web. Thats pritty messed up.
Thats just it.. the web isn't the Internet..
Telnet works just fine.. I irc every day and well.. Napster.. a whole unique protocal..
The Internet may change.. The web may burn out (with the only decent browsers as far as I can tell being for Amiga) but the Internet lives on.
I'm not even convenced the web has peeked...
I think what has happend was that land line bandwith has reached a limit. Not a technical one but a burrocratic one. Bandwith has allways progressed at a slower rate than everything else and now that we reached the limit of phone lines it's progressing even slower as we attempt to develup whole new technologys for digital sigal. Thanks to the burrocratic issues the red tape gets thicker and the bandwith grows at a slower rate. But bandwith demands increase a great deal faster.
I personally invision a day when land lines are limited to back bones and high bandwith carryers.. ISPs.. webhosts.. that level of things. This is allready at an insainly high speed and is likely to get faster. But consummer connectivity will increasingly go to radio IP. There is more flexability here. Each modem may addopt a new unque protocal. Yes that means each ISP will have to support your exact modem. It will complicate things a tad. Think like when 56k had 2 standards.. only worse...
USR will have one standard, Hays will have it's own standard, Ricochet is allready out there with it's standard.
A noname will be "USR protocal" or "Hays protocal" a noname with a noname protocal means your screwed.
Each protocal will have it's own issues. This one will have no compression. This one will lose data if the signal is weak. This one is effected by smogg.
Expect to have experts in radio bandwith...
On the other hand.. It will have some advantages. No more relying on local monopoloys for connections. No more having to deal with the phone or cable companys with wiring up your box.
It also means if you move you don't transfer the line to your new place.. you simply pack up your modem and take it with you.
I might add that over the next few years radio IP will come in the form of portable IP exclusivly. It won't start getting the sereous bandwith untill you start needing a larg antana. That won't happen for a long time yet.
On that note.. Radio IP has jumpped into broudband like speeds. Slow not comparable to cable or DSL but faster than dialup.. It isn't 100% there yet however.
As for protocals... I think we have a few more years to beat out of HTML before it's dead.
Also we are relying on bandwith to improve video.. video compression can do quite a bit for bandwith.
I don't actually exist.
When all the games are released on DVD discs like they now comes on CD's, we'll need lots of new bandwidth to pirate games. If nothing else, that'll keep The Internet growing.
Has The Internet Peaked? Hell no! I sure hope those mushrooms were tasty.
If you don't believe me check out my (rejected) story:
MS develops a new video format. DVD quality at 750kbps.
MS has released a new video format which betters MPEG4 30% in terms of bandwidth saving. The samples are very impressive particularly the 400kbps streams and the 750kbps file [snip].
Just because VOD is not possible with old video formats or that content providers are uneasy about "broadcasting" over IP doesn't mean it's impossible. After the mp3 fiasco it's gonna take quite a bit to convince them that internet content can be and will be protected against piracy. The technology is already with us and the real takeoff is close. Watch.
Rich
Web retailers posting out paper catalogues is a technique invented by boo.com, and we know how well it worked for them. If I worked for these people, I'd want to start getting paid in cash.
Amazon sent me a Jenga set the other week. I think they intended it as a customer perk, but it had entirely the opposite effect. Instead of ordering the couple of (unusually expensive) books I was about to, I bought them from the high street instead - just in case Amazon really was about to fold.
As far as I'm concerned, the Internet has not peaked until I can telnet to my toaster and run eject toast to shoot bread across the room and scare the hell out of my cats.
---- Just another spud server.
It might be called "the net peak" at your side of the world which is quite evolving. However, we don't even see the real net use here at the Middle East yet!
[I eagerly look forward to removing my Windows partition.]
The ultimate computer interface is interactive video and audio *everywhere*- every room, vehicle, and personal. Text will have limited applications and will mainly be used for precision and eggheads. So the computing GUI research, computer and pipe capacity will need to grow to reach this. Moore's law says we will reach this in a few decades. I see the stumbling block as being the interactive video GUI R&D rather than capacity.
This won't be a achieved in one smooth economic ramp, but in up and down cycles. Tech was up in the early 60s, early 80s and late 90s. It bombed in the late 70s, late 80s and appears to be diving now. But it will rise again.
I can't believe anyone would write such a career-ending article like this!
First of all, you didn't even mention the messaging part of the Internet. We can now communicate (via messaging) with people all across the world more efficiently and quickly.
And where did you mention e-Commerce in this article?! Sure you mention something about a company or two NOT using the Internet this XMas, but there are more this XMas using the Internet.
No other tool in the history of mankind has been able to drive our scientific research realm like the Internet. It allows massive collaboration between anyone, anytime.
Personally, I feel that articles and writers like this are not looking 'out of the box'. The Internet may not converge voice, video and data the way this article discusses it. We are opening up an entirely new realm of enabling tools that we can't possible predict the outcome of.
But, if you do want to stay looking inside of the box, then take the Voice over the Internet example. Voice was the first tool we were able to use to enhance human communications. Why not assume then that the first tool that will migrate to the Internet will be voice communications? Three years ago the long-distance carriers would have laughed at VoIP on their networks as a commodity. Now, if you're a long-distance carrier and you're not into the VoIP R & D or market now, you're way behind.
After voice has been established, then look for video. Don't assume it will all come at once. At this point the Internet is still in its infancy, and has QoS, scalability and stability problems. The Internet is best suited to data at this point and really nothing else.
Be patient, not stupid, man.
As I program, I find the Internet is becoming my most important tool. Things like mp3s and other such advances will continue to happen. The future is not written though, we cannot tell what is going to happen. However, remember that the Internet is unique, so applying any formula to it, to check its progress is a waste of time and inaccurate. For one thing, each day, more people use the Internet, than the previous day. Who knows? The next newbie who logs on today, could have the creative ideas that others need to create the next big product. At this point I believe we have only seen the very edge of what is coming. I personally predict software will become increasingly important to more items of daily use, and communication between items, will happen on the Internet. But as I said, the future is yet to be written, or shown to us, so we cannot predict what will happen.
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
Phones are in >97% of homes. Televisions are in >98% of homes. Residential Internet will have "peaked" when we reach those kinds of numbers. It may take many years to reach that point, but the social pressures for individuals to have e-mail and other Internet-based communications are just beginning to build.
Michael Cain
73.5% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
To say the net has peaked is like saying Well, I dont think processors are going to get much faster.
.NET movement. The whole idea is to have access to any of your information, wherever you go. Via PocketPC's running WindowsCE, and wireless broadband technology. But also behind .NET lies the idea that local storage will be obsolete, and that all information will be avail. via the internet.
Fact of the matter is, the net is going to be growing in leaps and bounds within the next few years. Not exactly in the public eye, but mostly for the upper class.
Now, being a Microsoft drone (ASP/COM) programmer, I've been to many Microsoft seminars on the whole idea behind the
Personally, I find this very uncomforting. So to get back to my orginal statement, I do belive that the internet will continue to reach peaks, and all time highs, but it will be interesting to see how this Utopia Microsoft has plans out will play in a world of 'Linux Kiddies' and Unix Sys. Admins.
The web will have it's peak when we are all free to do what we want with our hard IP connections. When the broad band providers drop their stupid restrictions on serving, and people understand that they too can contribute we will see an outpouring of content that will dwarf the current commercial offerings.
As it was in the begining is as it is and will be. Kill the lawyers.
I personally believe that every long lasting technology inevitably reaches a point where people worry if it has peaked and is going to level off. Whenever someone says this about the Internet, I wonder if people asked the same questions about cars after seeing Ford's Model-T. "What else could you ever want to put in/do with a car?"
karma is for the weak >)
I think that the whole "yay internet hip techno cool!" thing has finally started to die off. the internet is becoming as ubiquitous as TV. in a way this is good as it'll let people look beyond the hype in how to improve whats here. I think the main areas will be in growth of online communities (of course, i'm biased since i write software for this type of thing). Sort of like the BBSes of yesteryear. And I think everything else will be refined as well..more secure, stable, better written...
-
I want information. I want data that excites and entertains me, much in the way a good book would. I want bandwidth to explore new worlds - I want to use that data in the manner that I see fit, not how some other entity wants me to see it.
I will not passively sit and watch the world go by - give me HTML and vi! Watch as I create and publish, much as a sculpter would with stone and chisel.
I am tired of how society continues to think all it should do is take, take, take! Society should get off it's collective bum and give back. What is so difficult about being imaginative, letting ideas and creations flow?
Has the internet peaked? Bah! Only if we let it become the new boob-tube.
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
10 years ago the internet had a ton of information for students. Those that knew about it would call up gopher and use a simple interface to get to information that would be useful.
Then the web came 5 years ago. HTML was the new way of linking all those documents and formatting them so that they can be viewed and stored. At roughly the same time, the goverment sold off the net to commercial companies - who looked at HTML and saw a way of selling things to consumers. BOOM!! Went the net and it took off. More and more companies came to hawk things.
But what happened to the information. It's not useful to commercial companies to provide free information.
The Supreme Court has twice told the goverment, that they can not restrict what goes onto the net because it is a public forum and is protected by the 1st Amendment. Something that didn't bother companies - just the goverment.
But what happened to the information? Hypesters, hyped the market value of the net so why produce information. Just hawk things!!
The problem is that there are two views of the net. One for useful information, if it still existed. The other to hawk things. Well for the last 5 years many companies have come and gone because they couldn't get enough hype for their products (mostly vaporware for their IPO).
The net has been used for a commercial commodity while hawking the idea that the information still exists. If it truly did exist then why can't we get at it?
Soon comes the time where we have to decide. Do we use the Net for it's original purpose - information and communication? Or do we try to sell things on it? The net is being turned into television and the people are bored with television. The more information disappears the more it becomes just like TV. If the companies stop treating us like consumers and more like people who want information and give it away for free. The more people will use the net. Sell things and it's boring and who wants to log into a market place where you can buy the product but not really get any information to expand ourselves. That was what was being sold to people 5 years ago. Unfortunately, everyone forgot while in the middle of IPO heaven.
And the kids figured that one out. So now their bored. Who wouldn't be? If you click a link to tell you about computer systems and it turns out to be just another company hawking computers.
Save Pangaea!! Stop Continental Drift!!
You know, when I read that article, I could totally see where he's coming from, but indeed I think he's wrong. He's talking about the commercialization of the internet slowing. People are starting to realize that you can't make huge amounts of money off the internet forever. Eventually, the internet will not be a money-making thing, it will just be a medium through which all world communcation (except the face to face kind) happen. I think the real strengths of the internet are just starting to peek up their heads. Slashdot, for instance is an amazing example of what is possible on the internet. I know a lot of you will flame me and talk about how downhill you think /. is getting, but it proves a point. It proves that we can find out what's going on in our world (in the case of /. it's the geek world), without the traditional media (or at least, not as much dependant on them). My knowledge of current events in the geek world has increased rediculously since I started following and participating in this site, and I don't pay a penny for it. I think sites like this, and other sites with actual information are the future of the internet. Does it actually surprise anyone that people are getting tired of all the rediculous sites out there with nothing but a few jokes and a few gimmicks. The sites selling lots of shit are even worse. Now, I'm not dissing the concept of buying things on the internet, I do it all the time, but that's not a new business model, you're still selling the same shit you were, you're just doing it through a different communications medium, and a better one at that, imho. Anyway, that's my rant.
Joshua
Terradot
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!
That we can take back USENET?
every magazine or paper always comes out with this kind of article when there is any fluctuation in the amount of growth. pay no attention. it's marketing b.s. that they expect people to believe.
This is a fairly arrogant statement I had to address, even though it doesn't deal with the central point I'm about to make except indirectly. He's saying HE knows what the Web is all about and what it can offer. Well, clearly, nobody knows what the Web can offer, because I haven't seen timetravel.php on freshmeat yet.
I have a guess though, and recent trends are giving my guess some weight. Back many years ago Sun said "the network is the computer", and began pushing to have every workstation in the world be an audience member in that big crazy show we call the Internet. MS jumped on this boat by integrating a browser into the OS without bothering to include a web server. They assumed what most of us did - it was too difficult to actually offer content, so they looked at their TV's and said, "Hey! This is what the Web's gonna be like too!"
The Web hasn't peaked yet or anything like it because the real web is just getting under way. The real web is characterized by this statement: Every workstation in the world will be a server on the Internet. That's my prediction. The Internet is there, and it works, to offer interactivity, not passive absorption of banner ads. And as such, tools for offering content--Napster, Gnutella, freenet, and half a million open source modules for turning your little cable modem into an IRC bot shell account server or free porn story archive--are appearing every day. These tools are so usable that kindergarten teachers and auto workers and lawyers and janitors are setting up servers at home right next to the electrical engineers' and the web gurus'. Even /. and Usenet and other such resources that allow interactive commentary are an example of what I'm talking about - people using their bandwidth to contribute to the overall charater of the web.
We're seeing the birth of the next web right now--the altruistic web, where everyone pushes their knowledge out to everyone else, and accepts the knowledge of their users in return, instead of just waiting for their search engine to turn up the content. Broadband will help with this, but we need to work out a few kinks (like short-sighted ISP end-user agreements that forbid the setting-up of servers, and like getting fiber or power-line internet access rolled out to everyone). When these things start to bear fruit the Web will be more than just a convenient form of entertainment, it will become part of the cultural tapestry.
--
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
With every new computer that comes out on the market, and gets connected to the internet, there is no way possible for the internet to "peak". Isn't the internet just one big network of computers connected to eachother?
Internet usage my be peaking, but as newer technology and lower internet prices come out, there will be more and more users.
your sins into me, oh my beautiful one.
I know exactly what you're talking about; that nasty itchy feeling.
Until recently, I had FREE internet service, through work, but I was still on a dial-up account, so I was always worried about having the phone line tied up, or how fucking godamn fucking long it took to dial up, or whether Remote Access was going to freeze up on me.
I didn't use internet at home much.
Now with DSL, that I'm paying for. I feel totally unrestricted on the internet at home. The freedom is intoxicating. If I was dictator of the world, I would immediately BAN all cable access, and all dial-up access, and mandate that everyone have DSL access, and that phone companies build new CO's (or repeaters) to make sure everyone had it.
Would you vote for me?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
On Has The Internet Peaked? :
How much crap do believe is out there actually *worth* saturating your connection/senses with? You're not going to pay more for it. That much makes sense.
Anyone who was going to post a web page/file/whatever-content to an Internet server probably already has, or can without too much difficulty. (The Third-World respectfully excluded). Wether you find what you thought you wanted or not, there is so much available to you that the bottleneck is in your frontal lobes (your ability to understand/comprehend) and not in the server and not in the connections.
Connectivity of the 300bps internet-phone variety will be extended to billions of new low-power nodes as flash ROM and CPU resources get cheap enough to make *everything* smart and connected. The Third-World *will* eventually reach similar per-capita node densities. The Internet will continue to grow, and it will fruit with practical examples of the theoretical capabilities (vaporware) people were foaming at the mouth about for the last two years.
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
Sorry for my use of caps-lock, but I really hate when people talk about the web and refer to it as the entire internet. With microsoft wanting to network our fucking toasters how could anyone say that the net is dead? Maybe the web is, but the web IMHO was never really that interesting. But the net, it's no where near dead, it's being embedded into everything, and thats the beuty of it, you can embed network capability to anything and then communicate with it anywhere.
- *Normality Is The Root of All Evil*
In retrospect, the commentators had a real point. The subsequent Beatles albums weren't as good as Rubber Soul and Revolver--George Harrison said so himself not too long ago. but the Beatles had a lot left to do, like totally change the consciousness of the Anglo-American world.
I think there are a few things for the Internet left to do too. Expand the opportunities of our educational system, change the role of the arts, facilitate real-time democratic discussion...
Anyone who believes the Internet has "peaked" doesn't know anything whatsoever about the Internet.
They probably think the World Wide Web and the Internet are the same thing...
Is it just me, or is /. becoming a lame version of Yahoo!? This article is the 2nd time today I have seen a verbatim rehash of something posted on Yahoo! two days ago.
Edith Keeler Must Die
damn right. Pascal rulez!
Maybe the Internet has peaked. There are many other ways to network things, and networking will turn some other way. If the Internet goes away, something will take its place. What takes its place it not for certain. In the past, for example, interactive TV was considered to be the future. It has gone nowhere. However, much of the percieved value in today's Internet isn't there, and people are just beginning to realize that. The dot-coms aren't profiting enough, and something new will take their place.