Predictions about where the Internet is headed are, of course, hazardous. A dozen or so years after it began to become a fixture in American life, the Internet is still in a formative stage, subject to periodic earthquakes and lightning strikes. Google didn't exist a decade ago. Five years ago, no one had heard of MySpace. Facebook is just four years old, and YouTube is not quite three. Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. compares the current state of the Internet to television in the age of "Howdy Doody."
I don't really get that last line. Maybe it's a generational thing? Too far before my time? Does this mean the internet is still young?
Anyway, I was reminded of the now infamous quote from a tech company worker about how eventually there might be a market for a dozen or so computers in the world. Today, of course, there are billions. (Apologies for not finding the quote and quoting it verbatim.)
I basically live on the web. (I know a web developer whose business cards, rather than having a physical address, say "I come from the internet.") I like keeping up with the latest gadgets, newest sites, etc. It is also interesting to hear what people predict. But somehow I never place too much emphasis on or faith in it. Odds are they won't pan out. It's like Howdy Doody trying to envision MTV.
In a December 2006 blog entry, for example, an expert on ZDNet predicted:
Vista is going to raise the bar for experiences across the board. When Vista goes out to regular consumers in January it's going to set a new level for what they expect their applications to be. The subtleties of the UI and overall focus on a better experience is going to affect how those consumers see the web. When you think about the kind of applications that will be built for Vista using Windows Presentation Foundation, an even higher level if rich interactivity and media integration is going to be expected by Joe user.
In retrospect, this prediction was very off target. It's almost funny. Vista is hated by many, even techies. I've heard many a story about people forcibly jury rigging new laptops to work with older operating systems.
Need more of a fix? Check out Imagining the Internet Prediction Database for ideas that will make us giggle in a few years.
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From later on in the same AJR piece:
These dynamics could change, perhaps as stronger news sources emerge on the Web and weaker ones disappear. But even if the newspaper industry continued to lose about 8 percent of its print ad revenue a year and online revenue continued to grow at 20 percent a year – the pace of the first half of 2007 – it would take more than a decade for online revenue to catch up to print.
Journalists, or indeed anyone with an interest in journalism, had better pray that doesn't happen. Because online revenue is still relatively small and will remain so even at its current pace, this scenario implies years of financial decline for the newspaper industry. Even a 5 percent decline in print revenue year after year might look something like Armageddon. Newspapers were already cutting their staffs before this year's advertising downturns. A sustained frost of similar intensity would likely lead to even more devastating slashing. The cuts could take on their own vicious momentum, with each one prompting a few more readers to drop their subscriptions, which would prompt still more cuts. Some daily papers would undoubtedly fold.
I had issues with this assertion. The implication seems to me that the only real form of journalism is the newspaper industry. This seems like a very closed minded worldview. Yes, industries change. Newspapers in the States have undoubtedly changed significantly during their tenure.
If the author was concerned about some untouchable form of high journalism, why isn't he concerned about the fact that many newspapers have been getting lazy because they have had a virtual monopoly on their print market?
Competition with other forms of media is a good thing. It helps keep newspapers on target and give readers/buyers/etc what they want. In a one newspaper per town era, the internet has also helped locals have multiple news sources.
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