Comment Re:Brilliant insight, buried down here (Score 1) 299
> If I were a betting man, I'd bet that the web is still alive
> and kicking 5 years from now - whether or not "new and better" Internet
> technologies come along. The web is quite extendable
> with browsers having the ability to run plug-ins and vbscript/javascript,
> launch Active-X or Java applets, and so on.
I would second that - because of sheer inertia.
After giving her a twenty minute demo, I regularly get calls from my eighty year old aunt to look this or that up on the internet. So I am thinking about finding one of the early Imacs for her to get internet access herself.
Now, my main browser is NS 4.08, installed on Nov. 3rd, 1998 on my harddisk. Incidentally, this is almost exactly 5 years ago. If I turn javascript off, most pages do just fine. The rest will lose my business, or, if I really need the information, I can just telnet into somebody else's box to use a newer browser. However, especially when using google, a newer computer with a newer browser improves my searching experience by exactly 0%.
So, when I do not switch to a new browser for 5 years, why would you then expect my aunt to do so?
As the internet grows into maturity, expect the software used to access it to die with the computer it was bought with.
As computers grow into maturity, expect the hardware to last at least ten years.
So, I think, the internet year is going to have 365 earth days in the near future.
> and kicking 5 years from now - whether or not "new and better" Internet
> technologies come along. The web is quite extendable
> with browsers having the ability to run plug-ins and vbscript/javascript,
> launch Active-X or Java applets, and so on.
I would second that - because of sheer inertia.
After giving her a twenty minute demo, I regularly get calls from my eighty year old aunt to look this or that up on the internet. So I am thinking about finding one of the early Imacs for her to get internet access herself.
Now, my main browser is NS 4.08, installed on Nov. 3rd, 1998 on my harddisk. Incidentally, this is almost exactly 5 years ago. If I turn javascript off, most pages do just fine. The rest will lose my business, or, if I really need the information, I can just telnet into somebody else's box to use a newer browser. However, especially when using google, a newer computer with a newer browser improves my searching experience by exactly 0%.
So, when I do not switch to a new browser for 5 years, why would you then expect my aunt to do so?
As the internet grows into maturity, expect the software used to access it to die with the computer it was bought with.
As computers grow into maturity, expect the hardware to last at least ten years.
So, I think, the internet year is going to have 365 earth days in the near future.
