The Next Internet

“I am not sure how World War III will be fought,

But World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

– Albert Einstein

Human progress goes in fits and starts.  In 1969, an American stepped foot on the moon.  Today, the only country with a major space program is China.  No intelligent person in the late 60’s would have wagered on that outcome.

When Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated his first telephone, the public responded with hoots.  A famous interrogator once asked him, “What will anyone do with it?”

In the early 1980’s, IBM scoffed at the notion of a personal computer.  No doubt some highly paid executive asked the question, “What will anyone do with it?”  They handed control over to an acne-scarred kid named Bill Gates.  That decision makes the one the Indians struck for the sale of Manhattan – $28 in beads – glow with wisdom.

Bill Gates went on to terrorize the newly born computer industry with his campaign to make Windows the defacto standard for all computers, and to grind everyone else into the dust.  But Gates was never more than a capitalist; he had no concept of how computers could connect human beings all over the world.

When the Internet exploded onto the scene in the early 1990’s, Microsoft was wearing its pants around its ankles.  They had become IBM: a bulging behemoth with no vision.  One can just imagine the Microsoft Board meeting where someone uttered the term “Internet”.  Bill Gates smirked, “What will anyone do with it?”

Now we have the age of Google, where everyone is connected on the Internet.  The Internet is supposed to be the be-all and end-all of computing.  This new phase possesses eerie similarities with the technology booms of the past: a revolutionary idea comes along.  At first, no one believes in it.  But in a short time, the public’s perception changes hyperbolically.  The mob leaps on board.  The idea itself solidifies into dogma.   The major players monopolize the marketplace at the cost of innovation and competition.  Eventually, a new paradigm arises that destroys this established order.

The high-tech world only contains two things:

·         Data

·         Interface

We have still not succeeded at bringing real insight, efficiency or productivity into either hemisphere.  The Internet should only contain data, and should provide access to that data through indexes.  It should not attempt to decide what to do with the data.  Google’s dominance over the Internet is no different than Bill Gates’ reign of terror in the 1990’s: we have given them too much control over what is supposed to be a free medium.  The Internet is 99% garbage.  Most web sites are designed to attract users through searches that are based on bribery, and then to fleece them to pay Google for the right to do it.

In the new Internet, data will be totally independent of any company.  Domain names and search engines will be abandoned.  User groups will rate data using indexes.  In order to view data, you will subscribe to one or more of these indexes, and will trust the data only based on other users like you who have already reviewed, corrected, and approved the data.  If you don’t like the data you get, you will abandon the indexes that provided it to you.  This will generate a self-correcting Internet containing an ever-improving pool of useful data.

The Web has never been a good place for an Interface.  Users do not need to be told how to view or digest data.  The programs of the next Internet will use local resources on the user’s computer to customize the user experience.  The programs themselves will be published on the Internet, making them accessible anywhere.  That is where the Internet will end, and the user will begin: at the point of real control.  The new Internet will not scold the user, and will not have the power to say, “What will anyone do with it?”

Stephen Marcus