Decius wrote:
] ] The Internet has become a giant white elephant. Its
] ] technological capabilities are dazzling; its commercial
] ] realities are depressing.
]
] There is much to observe about the state of things in thinking
] about why this essay is wrong.
]
] I won't bother explaining why his over simplification of the
] intellectual property problem is misleading. Its well covered
] elsewhere.
]
] What I will note is that his analogy to automobiles is silly,
] but also instructive. Automobiles have been a part of our
] society for a hundred years. All previous forms of
] transportation have, for the most part, been elminiated, and
] the layout of our cities, in fact our whole planet, has been
] reorganized with the existence of automobiles in mind.
] Therefore, at this stage we could not hope to revert to steam
] locomotives, and carriages, without huge disruptions.
]
] The Internet, on the other hand, has been available
] commerically for around 8 years. Although already I feel like
] I couldn't live without it, we certainly haven't done any
] reorganizing of society to account for it it, and we haven't
] eliminated any of our older communications systems. So, yes,
] in general we could do away with it, much as we might have
] been able to do away with the automobile 8 years into its
] development.
]
] So his arguement is silly, but also illuminating. If you want
] to know what is going to happen over the next 50 years,
] consider what occured over the first 50 years of the
] automobile...

There is a reason why people use the automobile analogy. It works. For now. But what people forget is that the automobile is over 100 years old. If we were to compare Internet development and inculcation into society with automotives timeline, we'd be at the stage where we started to have more than one gear, stopped using gas or flame lit lanterns, and stopped using wagon wheels. We haven't even hit mass production yet. We're still at the stage where we have to manually crank the engine to start it, there is no such thing as a windshield or hood over the driver's compartment, and there's no such thing as suspension. You can't expect the Internet, in 10 years (commercial traffic was allowed first in 1993) to have the same impact as the automobile did in 1930... almost 50 years after its introduction.

But this guy is even more clueless. Not only does he not understand the Net's impact today, but he's gone out and explicitly stated that the Net caused innovation to slow. Bullshit. Innovation will be one of the biggest benefactors of a networked society because ideas and knowledge and communication will be as fluid as ever, not forgetting the fact that a worldwide collective can be applied to any problem or concept. If anything, innovation was rapidly accelerating at the end of the roaring 90s. What ceased was availability of capital. What caused innovation to slow was monopoly and hegemony, things that were very difficult to support or defend during the roaring 90s because of the threat of competition.

Also, the Net has profoundly changed our lives today. You wouldn't be reading this without it. We wouldn't have availability of practically any good or service, worldwide, in an instant, without it. The massive shift of the financial world, real estate, publishing, and countless other industries would not have happened otherwise. Those shifts, while quantifiably 'small' today (arguably, but not sensically) are ultimately huge. No one will fax in an order any more. No one reads personal ads in the paper anymore. No one goes to the bank teller to check on their account balance.

Ultimately what the Net has done is supercharge productivity. We can be instantly available, have the world at our fingertips, and ACHIEVE practically anything online very quickly. Even untethered in some cases. This is extraordinarily profound and people seem to deny it for some reason. Productivity is the enabler of everything else. So, yes, the Net hasn't necessarily eradicated old ways of doing things to the extent that was being professed in 99, but that's because it has massively enabled EVERYTHING in every industry. In 100 years, the comparisons to the automobile will seem silly, because the automobile will pale in comparison to the Net for it's ultimate contribution to society.

RE: Lack of innovation fueled Internet failure