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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?"
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
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.
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.
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!
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 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...
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
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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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
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.
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.
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...
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?
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?
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
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
this assumes that all email won't automatically be lowest priority, but do you really think that spammers are going to assign their messages a lower priority than the highest possible setting? by this i mean: if email message priorities are settable at all, spammers are of course going to assume that theirs is top priority all the time in order to abuse the system and spread their message.
hardly a revolutionary thought, i know, but it's a concern anyway. perhaps you and i are thinking of different concepts as far as this is concerned. feel free to correct me.
cheers,
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
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.
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
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!!
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.
So who decides what is important?
The reason that the priority bits in IP4 are universally ignored is that there is no "price signalling mechanism" (as economists term it). In other words it costs nothing more to set the priority bits than to clear them, so people will set them and everything becomes high priority.
So what it comes down to is that if QoS is going to work effectively on the Internet in IPv6 you are going to have to pay for it by the byte, or by the second for guaranteed bandwidth (as in RSVP). And on top of that there will have to be the accounting overhead by which your ISP bills you and then pays the carriers further along, and some system for finding the cheapest route at the moment, given the huge number of possible routes through various administrative domains.
And when we have done all this, are people actually going to pay for it? I rather doubt it. People really like the unmetered aspect of Internet use. It means you don't have that nasty itchy feeling that the clock is ticking, so you can take your time. Anyway, if the Net was sufficiently loaded that QoS mechanisms would help an individual, it would probably be so loaded that any request for guaranteed bandwidth would be rejected.
Where QoS does come into its own is in planning converged networks where voice and data both flow over IP. In the future the separate voice and data lines that companies use for internal phone systems, and which the phone companies themselves use, are likely to be merged into single IP networks. This reduces costs because you only have one network to maintain instead of two. But to make this work you need QoS so that your voice telephone traffic gets the bandwidth it needs.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
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
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); }
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
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!
Rich
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.
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 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
That we can take back USENET?
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.
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It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
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.