The Web That Splintered May Be Reforged

Via Future of the Internet, I came across The Splinternet means the end of the Web's golden age.

And I scratched my head. Where all the new technologies are concerned, there is most certainly a divergence in technologies - by design of corporations, of course - and I recalled the last 20 years of the Internet. And with what I've seen, I can only summarize my response to 'The Internet Splintering' with the premise of divided technologies... 'bull541t'.

Why? The Internet has long been at the center of the turf war of the corporate standards. Web browsers, for one - standardization of HTML is a brilliant example (Microsoft still doesn't get it. Or it's just trying to cash in. Pick.). There was XML. There were some web technologies that died natural deaths (has anyone seen VBScript on the web recently? Frontpage?) as newer and better technologies evolved. Some last despite themselves (Flash).

And each one of the technologies that survived had something in common: They evolved into something with some sort of standards. And the Splinternet as portrayed in the article will ebb. That's the Internet and its technologies. Ebb and flow. If you quit looking for trends in the Internet, sooner or later you'll find that they have been smacking you in the face while you were staring at the sun.

Paywalls? Not new. And paywalls may not be as successful as some have rationalized out of hope.

But then, the web is splintered.

What? Have I gone off my rocker after explaining that the web isn't really splintered? No, I simply said it isn't splintered in that way. As it is, the web is splintered by nation, by language, by culture, by broadcast rights, by corporate manipulation (net neutrality) and so on. Yet every year it seems that people do become less splintered and more splintered because of the web.

When it comes to Apple products, for example, Apple prices them at what are largely seen as ludicrous prices. Apple fans will say that their products are worth it and I'm almost sure that they're right in their own individual contexts. Still, the point is that Apple products are now not so much 'culturally elite' as 'disposable income elite'. The majority of people don't buy Apple products - it's that magic spot where pricing, tech and marketing that keeps Apple where it can target that market. Meanwhile, the rest of the world - the non-Apple users - use other things that are based around some form of more open standard and have less trouble getting peripherals, spend less money getting them, and have less trouble sending data to each other.

So Apple, in this way, is a part of the digital divide - socioeconomically. It's worth wondering how much longer Apple can keep doing this.

And the Amazon Kindle - as much as the rave reviews of the Kindle circulate, it's really not that amazing. But it's a way to get (and lose) content, and they represent data differently. That's the same with almost any corporate device. It's Betamax versus VHS all over again. Sure, websites might not look the same - but websites don't even look the same with different web browsers, different operating systems, different graphics cards, different monitor sizes and resolutions and let us not forget the ability and tastes of the users.

Splinternet? Sure. And no. Because standards necessarily evolve, even if it means the death of a good technology (I preferred GEM Desktop over Windows 3.11).

There is no splintering. The Internet will always be as splintered as the humanity that 'share' it. Necessarily, to share we have to standardize. The evolution of Internet technology shows more of spending habits than which piece of hardware to connect with.

And even then - the standards come. It happens with every successful technology as the economy around it steers.

Splinternet, Schminternet.