Has The Internet Peaked? 183
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?"
It should stay this way (Score:1)
In a word? (Score:4)
Fawking Trolls! [slashdot.org]
Hardly (Score:2)
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.
...out on paper instead? (Score:1)
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.
How wide is that statement (Score:5)
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.
No is isn't (Score:1)
That and grudge match(www.grudge-match.com) still hasn't had Mr. T in enough fights.
Yes, the internet has peaked (Score:2)
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, [napster.com], discourse [slashdot.org], and protest [slashdot.org].
...out on paper instead of online? (Score:2)
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.
Regular Growth (Score:4)
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.
Re:...out on paper instead? (Score:1)
um, what? (Score:4)
Film at 11 (Score:4)
Death of Internet Predicted: Film at 11:30.
Eternal September (Score:1)
hope so...
I think not. (Score:1)
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.
The answer is... (Score:1)
HTML-correction (Score:1)
music, [napster.com], discourse [slashdot.org], and protest [indymedia.org].
Shutting down the internet (Score:5)
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.
pr0n (Score:2)
No. (Score:1)
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.
Really? (Score:1)
New technologies will help to continue to develop the internet. So if anything, maybe we have reached a plateau.
more katzology (Score:1)
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
TV (Score:1)
peaking internet (Score:1)
One thing that is being researched (Score:1)
Re:Hardly (Score:1)
Personally, I don't think the internet peaked - it grows at a nice, gradual scale, and we overinflated its capabilities. I figure its about a year or three behind our expectations, and that's frustrating. It has not peaked, it has just spiked slightly.
Expecting too much out from too little? (Score:2)
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.
Listen in... (Score:5)
(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..."
These People..... (Score:1)
Short answer: No; Long Answer: Maybe (Score:2)
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...
The Web Has Not Peaked (Score:1)
>neotope
The peak of the Internet? (Score:2)
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)
Peak? No, the novelty has just worn off... (Score:2)
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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Progress. Regress. Digress. (Score:1)
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 naysayer in every crowd (Score:5)
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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Peaked?? (Score:1)
Well.... (Score:1)
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!).
Re:In a word? (Score:1)
Bad phrasing, good point (Score:1)
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
Re:The Web Has Not Peaked (Score:1)
(Think virtual reality... better yet, don't.)
crash.neotope.com [neotope.com]
Peaked? I think that's a good thing (Score:4)
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.
He means the hype has peaked (Score:1)
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.
The Internet is *just* starting. (Score:1)
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 are they basing it on? (Score:1)
The Internet != www (Score:5)
stuff that will never peak on the internet (Score:1)
Re:Shutting down the internet (Score:2)
Re:In a word? (Score:1)
This just in... (Score:5)
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.
Peaked, but still growing (Score:1)
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.
Re:One thing that is being researched (Score:1)
Umm... it's being researched? Hell, it's been done for years.
No the internet will never peak (Score:1)
Internet peaked? (Score:1)
Let's not be foolish (Score:1)
Time is Change.
Re:Shutting down the internet (Score:1)
Yes and no (Score:2)
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.
Re:Hardly (Score:2)
1. Porn
2. Slashdot
3. Email/instant messages
We use Email & Instant messages to talk about and view porn and we read slashdot to learn about advances in technology that further progress the porn industry.
Not by a long shot. (Score:1)
Re:In a word? (Score:2)
Around the world governments (like Canada) are in the process of building high speed FTTN (Fibre To The Neighbourhood) networks to provide every citizen with stable, secure, high speed access to an international IP-based network infrastructure. I, for one, am looking forward to the future of technology. We may be entering a recession, now that Dubya Quayle is in office, but one day there will be unlimited MIPS for all. Until that time, network and computer usage will continue to grow. I know a few luddites whose only excuse for not having internet access or a beefed up computer is that they are waiting until they perfect most technologies (read: handhelds running realtime voice translation based upon new processor technologies). The technology ceiling in our society for clock cycles, bandwidth, and giggage has not been reached, and it won't be reached for at least another twenty years. -- CM
Re:Hardly (Score:1)
The 56k crowd will never die because the internet experience @ 56k is not sufficiently inferior to the internet experience @ cable or adsl speeds.
The only thing fast connectivity is good for is downloading high quality porno mpg's and warez.
Re:It should stay this way (Score:1)
You mean getting rid of stupid MIDI files and 3.5MB jpeg's that come right out of the scanner and never get reduced before getting published on cheesey AOL and Geocities personal web pages?
Perhaps if we solved this whole Spam problem we could free up a couple of extra hundred million Gigabits of bandwidth every day.
Really though, I have to agree. The internet is huge, it's everywhere, and it is going to be here a while. It's time to clean it up a little. Standardize on HTML, browser colors, JavaScript, XML, DHTML, and all the other stupid things that the browser companies cannot agree on. Perhaps forming the FWYTYBFBCTIHFETEAYAFITUBUCAOS (that would be the Fuck What You Think You Big Fucking Browser Companies The Internet is Here For Everybody To Enjoy And You Are Fucking It Up Because You Can't Agree On Shit) committee to standardize all of this, and get rid of the damn "Best viewed with.." crap, so everyone can enjoy the same content.
I think, in many ways, the internet "explosion" has peaked, but like all things that change as fast as the internet, details often get overlooked in the process. It's time to pay attention to these details, standardize, expand broadband service, then we can begin to explore the real potential of the internet.
Re: (Score:1)
What comes after the Internet? (Score:1)
Rationalized, not peaked (Score:2)
Re:One thing that is being researched (Score:1)
While prefetching algorithms and there relation ship to personality (profile) analysis is an intreging field of study (as far as all hypermedia systems - not just the web), it doesn't actually acommodate the increasing number of dynamic uses for the web.
The theory behind hypermedia systems goes something like this.
Hypermedia systems are designed in such away as to enhance humans cognitive ability by mimicking the human cognitive process. This invovles primarily the uses of associative information trails, and these come about by the user following hyperlinks through an information space based on the context of that information.
In this environment the prefetching algorithm studies are invaluable and would be of great use, how ever the web is no longer just an information based hypermedia system. It's become commercialised now, greatly.
The vast majority of dot commers want to use the internet, and hence world wide web to sell something. Selling objects on the web requires dynamic functionality, the server (or information store) now has to also interact, as well as keep track of what information is where it now has to do complex processing on it all for the purpose of furnishing someones pocket.
The commercial uses of the internet are pulling it away from the conventional definition of a hypermedia system every day, and as such rendering important and interesting fields of cognitive studies redundant (to the web).
Because of the dynamic ('come buy my shit') nature of the web prefetching algorithms based on user profiles become either ineffective or incredibly complex (think about it - how do you fetch a page which displays all your current purchases based on your used id and date - it aint static).
Media driven (Score:3)
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.
Cost of quality (Score:2)
The future.. (Score:1)
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
Re:Expecting too much out from too little? (Score:2)
It's rediculous to assume that a faster means of information will magically provide us with new experiences. The limits aren't in bandwidth but how content providers choose to use it.
I disagree (please don't cry).
Compare the internet to radio. In the beginning there were all sorts of avenues for exploration and development - live programming, news shows, dramas, music, higher-fidelity music, stereo, call-in shows. Then the ideas stopped coming. Radio has become stagnant (actually, worse; it's regressed as station ownership has become consolidated, but that's besides the point).
With the internet, on the other hand, we're still several technological generations behind being able to implement a lot of the things that people have already dreamed up. Video-on-demand, all sorts of interpersonal interactivity, remote 3-D printing, high-bandwidth wireless anywhere access, interconnectivity with all the appliances and systems in our homes, etc.
Look, when I started using the internet, you could squeeze mail through creaking gateways, and maybe get FTP to work to a couple of sites at certain times of the day. I dialed into an internet-connected Sun across a 2.4kb/s modem. 13 years on, the underlying protocols are the same, but everything else is basically unrecognizable. But we've barely done anything so far!
One of the biggest changes, one that's just beginning, is the digitificalization of all media. Newspapers and magazines are already sent by PDF to remote printing plants for simultaneous worldwide distribution; radio stations are all going online, TV and movies are distributed digitally to cable companies and now even cinemas. The converging availability of all these infotainment streams through one device (it's gonna happen, no two ways about it) will completely change the way we communicate with the outside world - and it with us.
As long as we have a full hopper of new ideas, and as long as the technological improvements necessary to realize those ideas keep being developed at a rapid pace, internet-related change is going to keep going. Everyone likes to make contrarian picks; if they're wrong, they're ignored, but if they're right, the predictor is hailed as a visionary. This makes them pretty cheap unless they're backed up better than this article is.
Three comments (Score:5)
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.
More to come (Score:4)
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?
revolution? (Score:2)
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.
You mean the Web has peaked? (Score:2)
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.
Re:In a word? (Score:3)
Remember when DRAM peaked at 640K?
too many job/resume sites (Score:2)
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.
Re:Film at 11 (Score:2)
Re:In the SAME word? (Score:2)
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
Yep, since the joke is based on lies....... (Score:2)
Astonishingly limited viewpoint (with breakdown) (Score:2)
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
Whaaa?? (Score:2)
Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis (Score:3)
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.
Re:In the SAME word? (Score:2)
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.
Reservations don't work either (Score:2)
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 [stanford.edu]
Depends on your time horizon (Score:2)
Interactive TV (Score:3)
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
Get back under the bridge. (Score:2)
(Translation for those who don't know fairy tales: Score: -1, Troll)
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Re:Regular Growth (Score:2)
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Re:In a word? (Score:2)
>earth has a least 10 unique numbers already assigned to them (social security, bank accounts, phone numbers, email addresses).
IPv6 has quality of service support. That means that VOIP can go telephone quality or better. It also allows for videophones- and the bandwidth of ADSL is about right for that.
Videophones are probably another killer app.
Then there's video on demand, near video on demand. Another killer app.
You can sorta run these services ontop of IPv4 but they don't work very well.
What they mean of course... (Score:2)
Rich
Re:In a word? (Score:3)
Yeah, and remember how cars went to 8 cylinders, to 10 to 12, and even to 16 and higher in some cases. Then 8 seemed to be a reasonable upper limit in terms of size, performance, and reliability. Most cars have 4 cylinder engines these days.
The 640K comment was a bit premature, yes, that doesn't mean that memory sizes will increase for ever and ever. There's a point of diminishing returns. In terms of processor speed I think we're hitting it now.
And funnily enough, there are machines out there that don't even have 640K, like smaller PDAs and the biggest selling hand-held computer of all time: the Game Boy.
PTP toast (Score:2)
you aint seen nuthin yet! (Score:2)
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.
Re:Three comments (Score:2)
This is great stuff--I heartily agree! Anyone who claims to be able to write about the Internet should repeat that 10 times every morning: "The commercial web is not the web. The web is not the Internet" You've hit the nail on the head.
The thing that is instructive (to the mainstream media) about things like napster, irc, and online games, is that they have little or nothing to do with "the web". They don't fit the "Go to a web site and click BUY" mold, and this scares people.
I've talked to relatives who honestly believe that the only reason the Internet exists is because it is a new way to "Buy Stuff(tm)".
As with all media, there is a certain percentage that is here because of commercial interests, and a certain percentage that is "independant" and is done without commercial motivation. Public radio vs. Casey's top-40 (although some would argue that because public radio is partially subsidized commercially it is not purely independant)
Unfortunately, so far, most mainstream media (books, magazines, radio, television,
The Internet is different because it is still largely independant. Before the commercial world's saturation of the Internet, it was a place where people shared information because that information is usefull to others, and not because it could be a way to Make Money Fast. If the Internet (in zdnet's mind, the commercial web) has peaked, I think this is a great thing. It shows that more and more people are using the Internet for reasons OTHER THAN shopping. This would help ensure that the Internet doesn't become the next television.
But I don't want TV! (Score:2)
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 [worldcom.com] - Generation Duh!
Does this mean... (Score:2)
The transformation (Score:2)
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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that burning sensation in your pants (Score:2)
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?
Re:A naysayer in every crowd (Score:2)
He was always more interested in the theoretical implications of computing than the beasts themselves, something I always found sadly bewildering.
D
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Re:Peaked? I think that's a good thing (Score:2)
Of course if you know exactly what book you want, and just need to buy it now, Amazon is surely a lot easier than anything else. But there's a great appeal in visiting a massive Borders or Barnes & Noble, sitting down amid a massive pile of books, and digging in.
Interesting data point: I bought lingerie online for The Person Who Doesn't Want to be called my Girlfriend, per her advice, using her own shopping list. When it came time to check out, using two different browsers (IE on MacOS X and Netscape on MacOS 9), the purchase didn't work. It was only my obvious motivation to buy the lingerie that caused me to find IE on OS 9 worked. I'm sure this kind of thing is a major reason e-commerce sites are in trouble. Really, you have to experience some of them to believe how rotten they are.
D
D
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Re:In a word? (Score:2)
The Internet didn't peak but Netscape certainly did (VEG)
Re:Peaked? I think that's a good thing (Score:2)
Agreed - for us we expect moving our (publishing) operations onto the web to make everything run smoother, faster, better, but it's not going to produce money out of thin air - quite the contrary as we're still trying to figure out how we're going to end up maintaining the business in the long run!