The End of the Web, Computers, and Search as We Know It
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/02/the-end-of-the-web-computers-and-search-as-we-know-it/
The author makes it sound like there is a looming revolution in the way things are done. Perhaps so, but to me this seems like an evolution rather than a revolution. A revolution, in my mind, is where the old ways of doing things cease altogether. An example would be cell phones which pretty much made pay phones obsolete, or the WWW and Wikipedia that made encyclopedias a quaint relic of a bygone era. I do see handheld, tablet and personal computers going away once implants are perfected (I figure the next two decades at most), so see that as revolutionary, but when they finally get the really cheap paper-thin TV screens I don’t see that as a revolution, but as an evolution (though moving from tubes to flat screen is arguably a revolution). As such, I don’t see a ‘switch’ to a time-based web as a revolution; in my mind it is simply evolving. Just as the very early WWW was all about static pages which then evolved into dynamic pages that allowed access to databases and rapidly evolving information. Facebook has certainly had a major impact on the life of the average web surfer (zip to me, though; since I know how to write HTML as well as program CGIs, all Facebook could offer me is contact with people I got no interest in interacting with), but really, can a rational person consider that a revolution? Even Google wasn’t a revolution in my mind. There were plenty of search engines that could have easily gone their route, but the managers lacked the requisite vision.
Anyone care to share their thoughts?
