Happy New Year 2011
So… that was my password.
- Bill H
- Director
- Soft Machine Development
- 9 articles by Bill H
- Herve G
- Director
- Media Monkey Studies
- 4 articles by Herve G
The Death of Cyberspace or… Distance 2.0
Cyberspace is dead.
My apologies to William Gibson, but I never did « get it » with regards to cyberspace. It was too « out there » for me. No pun intended, but the whole thing was not very down to Earth. I like to know where I am, where I’m going, and how long it’s going to take for me to get there. I’ll be the first to acknowledge that I am, especially for an IT guy, an exception in that respect. Many of my colleagues talk about cyberspace as if such a place really existed and that they were somehow living and working in it. Don’t tell them I told you this, but I always thought that they were a bunch of dorks.
Cyberspace is dead.
Get over yourselves, please. The whole shebang is just a bunch of telecoms equipment and cables. All that stuff is meshed together with slathers of software, and the entire setup is firmly implanted in the real world and subject to the same physical and judicial laws, rules, and regulations as your automobile and your office’s photocopier. “Being in cyberspace” was always a sure fire sign of delusional disconnect.
Cyberspace is dead.
After years of becoming the « next big thing », it’s become nothing. After years of spreading through society, industry, education, commerce et al. we are now left with what remains when the spreading stops. The real world, only wired. Back to reality and not a moment too soon.
Cyberspace is dead.
Remember all that guff about how the Internet was bringing about “the death of distance”. We are now back in the real word and it’s been criss-crossed by a fine grid that can measure our movements past, present, and future. Precise measurements in time and space. Nothing but distance.
Cyberspace is dead.
Location-based services are now marrying the two entities that the Web 2.0 version of cyberspace tried very hard to make believe didn’t exist: the real world and markets. Not markets as in “my loss making startup is worth x because I have access to other people’s money and y eyeballs”. Not markets as in “freeconomics” (or whatever this week’s buzzword happens to be). No. Markets as in actual “supply and demand”. The real world as in “what do I need and where can I get it”. But in order to take advantage of that, I have to keep both my feet planted firmly in the real world.
Cyberspace is dead. …and good riddance. I never much cared for the place anyway.
Coming soon to a screen near you
Or rather, coming soon to a small screen near you.
Very early buzz (wait, is that pre-buzz or proto-buzz?) is using the Web 3.0 label to classify the “coming soon to a small screen near you” mobile apps that are being developed literally as you read this. Recent months have seen several barriers to entry start to fall by the wayside: lack of true mobile web surfing, too few predominant mobile platforms and corresponding SDKs, patchy bandwidth, and too strict a division between the consumer and enterprise markets. Most importantly, mobile operator walled gardens are now under siege as users slowly but surely are able to run the mobile apps they want in addition to those imposed by their operator. Mobile space is starting to look more like web space.
After an inevitable first wave of imitation composed of web sites repackaged as mobile apps, we should start to see some true innovation with applications designed from the bottom up to take advantage of the characteristics of the new mobile platforms.
Location-based apps are first out of the gate in this respect, but expect to see other types of functionality showcased as nascent user habits find there way into the feedback loop.
Be on the lookout for game changing developments as well. For example, the yellow pages industry, already badly shaken by Google, is looking at either a great mobile opportunity allowing it to leapfrog back into the lead of the local search space, or the disruptive technology that might very well bury it.
Of course, accompanying the good will be the bad. There will be no lack of Web 3.0 bloviating about how “this time it’s different”. There will be mobile vaporware. There will be mobile malware. There will be — groan — a wave of miniaturized for small screen user-generated content. Just as with the Web 1.0 and 2.0, we will all have to sift through the noise, separate the good from the bad, and keep telling ourselves… Don’t believe the hype.
What do we have cooking for your small screen here at CPU Media? Watch this space.
Deep Thought
Why is it that the snake oil peddling Web 2.0 honchos who claim that they can’t find the time to sift through their 1000+ daily e-mails are exactly the same ones who swear that they can efficiently respond to every comment on their blogs while reading every Tweet and viewing every streaming video from every single one of their 10,000+ friends. Can you detect a whiff of hucksterism here?
For the case in point, see previous post
Funny how things sometimes seem to fall in place simultaneously. An unexpected follow-up to Bill’ latest entry that sums up the situation with a timely Twitter entry:
If social media has done anything, it’s shown that this planet is overrun by assholes.
Assholes with a big megaphone.
It looks like Starbucks will be the next lucky ducky
One screaming pitchfork mob 2.0 coming right up.
Storm clouds? Good. Sometimes we need a real rain to wash the gutters.
There have been some sinister rumblings over the Two-Point-O landscape as of late. Which ones, you ask?
Well, there was Google’s grudging admission that profits are hard to come by over at Youtube and that, for the time being, it doesn’t have the slightest idea about how profits might be generated. Perhaps the great collective mash-up of user generated content is only the latest incarnation of a sub-prime derivative.
There is the slow but steady advancement of the Olivennes Doctrine in several countries whereby intellectual property thieves will be monitored by their ISPs.
There is also the relentless chipping away at the egalitarian ideology otherwise known as “Net Neutrality”.
What the babas-crevards1 see as storm clouds, we here at CPU Media see as a return to business as usual. The unshakeable and timeless certitude that hard work, good communication, and ultimately, the generation of profits, are what determines a business’ success. Not property theft gussied up in egalitarian claptrap or lowest common denominator free-for-alls disguised as communities of friends.
The coming Cluetrainwreck 2.0 will not be a financial meltdown like the bursting of the 1.0 bubble was. With a few exceptions, company valuations are not bloated as the media hype would have you believe. The Nasdaq is not in the stratosphere and the wads of cash being bandied about are not as huge as the 1.0 buckets of greenbacks that were hurled to and fro at the end of the previous century. No, the Cluetrain is set to be derailed by the realisation that, once again, “this time it’s not different”. The sudden realisation that the rule of law still exists. The renewed realisation that the law of supply and demand applies, albeit in varying ways, to businesses designed to take advantage of networking effects. The crucial realisation that property rights can and must be protected. The dawning realisation that operators, within the reason of profit-and-loss business logic, can do exactly what they want with their bandwidth and networks. Hell, if you don’t like it just build your own network, slap your name across it, and hoist your bragging multicolor logo high into the capitalist firmament. “Marca Registrada, baby”.2
- Babas-crevards : Pardon our French. Babas-crevards are a common species in and around Paris. Imagine if you will, a cross between a Berkeley educated idealist and a welfare-assisted underachiever equipped with a top-of-the-line MacBook and the ideological conviction that he has a birthright to unlimited Wi-Fi. All on your dime, of course.
- Marca Registrada, baby : see Snow Crash.
Good question, I’m glad you asked
Ah yes, I’ve been seeking answers on that question for a bit as well.
And an excellent analogical choice of terms too.
