Wired put out their controversial post yesterday entitled, The Web is Dead, Long Live the Internet. It was kind of a dumb distinction between “the web” and “the internet”. Basically they were saying that everything we use online is going in the direction of app-based use.
This made me stop and think about the internet a little more. I wonder what the big picture purpose of the internet is… or is there a big picture purpose? In my opinion, it has a lot of potential but also has a big risk of going the way of television and producing garbage that consumes people’s lives. In fact, that was one of the reasons why I wanted to first impose a restriction for myself and then opted instead for choosing what I really want to do.
So I’m wondering how internet will fit in our lives 10 or 15 years from now. I think we’ll connect ourselves to the point where there will eventually be a “real-life” revolution. People will get sick of looking at their 3-inch screens. Eventually we’ll decide we want our real world back and we’ll only keep the web apps in our lives that really add value and we’ll let everything
else die. We’ll use the web as a tool for our lives, and nothing more. So even though the internet is close to 20 years old now - I think it will still be evolving quite a bit over the next 20 - it will grow from the adolescent it is today to become a mature adult.
And I guess I do agree with the Wired magazine article - everything will become use based. I use this app for that, and that app for this. We won’t spend hours a day browsing and scanning and tweeting and updating statuses, etc. But whether we call it the web or the internet, really isn’t important.
I’m actually trying to morph my life and internet use in this direction now. I love the internet, but I’m only trying to use for things that add value to my life.