Web 2.0 is the buzzword of the moment. Dion Hinchcliff, who maintains one of the many blogs which are almost exclusively devoted to “web 2.0″ content, said
Web 2.0 is white hot at the moment, and not just because of the hype, but because of the insane amount of stuff that’s being built for it right now.
I know, I know. It sounds like the Cluetrain Manifesto all over again. Well, it kinda is.
Except that it’s actually happening today all over the place and you can use it now….
That’s a pretty strong statement. It sounds like the Cluetrain Manifesto, except that it’s acutally happening.
Let’s meditate on that for a moment.
Okay, that’s enough.
I’ll be totally honest. I don’t have the best track record for predicting the future. You need to keep that in mind whenever I write anything about technology. Let’s flashback to 1990. I was a senior in high school. Me and a classmate–we’ll call him Jim, because that was his name–were standing around the Mac lab. Jim was one of the “official” Mac lab helpers/geeks, and I was an unofficial one, just because I was there so often. Here is a best I can remember of this conversation we had, oh, fifteen years ago…
Jim: I hear that Microsoft is developing a new GUI based operating system.
Phil: You’re kidding. What, like the Mac?
Jim: Yup.
Phil: No one will buy that. The Mac is already here.
Jim: This will run on PCs, though.
Phil: Microsoft? You mean, the company that makes Works? And Word?
Jim: The company that makes DOS.
Phil: What’s wrong with DOS? I like DOS. Why do you need a GUI?
Jim: People think DOS hard to use.
Phil: Hard to use? DOS is easy. There’s, like, four commands. Or five. To change a drive, you type a letter.
Jim: There’s no mouse.
Phil: What do you need a mouse for? They’re kind of annoying, anyways.
Jim: Well, they’re making it anyways. It’s going to be big.
Phil: It’s going to totally flop. There’s nothing wrong with DOS, and if anyone wanted a GUI, they’d buy a Mac.
*sigh* The older I get, the better my hindsight becomes.
So, now that we’ve established an enormous precedence for my predictions being WRONG, let’s completely ignore it and go on with the post.
The aforementioned Dion Hinchcliff has a new diagram up, which he calls a “more traditional, concrete diagram of web 2.0″.
I’m conflicted. On the one hand, this stuff–all the APIs, the technology, the applications, associated with “web 2.0″–is totally cool. On the other hand, the name is corny. “Web 2.0″. Well, I guess that’s my sole complaint. That and an unhealthy penchant for disassociation with ultra-hip buzzwords… but what the heck. Web 2.0, if that’s what we’re going to call it, is great, fascinating stuff.
The Tim O’Reilly Web 2.0 Meme-map of this post’s title is here:
This may actually wind up to be the way that “Linux” winds up on a lot of people’s desktops. That is, if Web 2.0 actually provides the productivity (including office) applications that everyone needs, and if the servers running those apps run Linux… it sort of ceases to matter what OS the client is running, as long as the browser works. If it begins to matter too little, then people will get tired of paying for a client OS at all, and would probably rather pay for the functionality of some feature-rich web applications.
Who’s going to make those applications? Microsoft? Not any time soon; they’re too busy trying to salvage Longhorn Vista. Google? Yahoo? You? Me? Maybe, maybe, maybe, and maybe; though I might change that first “maybe” to a “probably” in many cases.
One question I do have: why are so many “web 2.0″ apps or “proofs of concept” (ie, Bindows) so hung up on creating little windows that live in the broswer, that act just like normal windows? If we need these, we can create new browser windows with JavaScript. Other than to simply show what we can really do on the web, I don’t see the point of getting that deeply into an emulation of GUI windows in a browser. If you want different apps/pages open, you could use different browser windows, or different tabs.
Now, having said that, the “windows” that people have created with JavaScript, CSS, and XHTML, are in many cases pretty cool (I’m thinking specificaly of meebo right now). I just don’t know that they’re really necessary. Wouldn’t it be both easier… and (possibly) better… to try to implement some of the ideas that the late HCI guru Jef Raskin was onto with his Archy OS? Hm.
This has been a long post. Hope somebody enjoyed it.
