The End of the Wild Wild Web

The shift of the digital frontier from the Web, where the browser ruled supreme, to the smart phone, where the app and the pricing plan now hold sway, signals a radical shift from openness to a degree of closed-ness that would have been remarkable even before 1995. In the U.S., there are only three major cell-phone networks, a handful of smart-phone makers, and just one Apple, a company that has spent the entire Internet era fighting the idea of open (as anyone who has tried to move legally purchased digital downloads among devices can attest). As far back as the �80s, when Apple launched the desktop-publishing revolution, the company has always made the case that the bourgeois comforts of an artfully constructed end-to-end solution, despite its limits, were superior to the freedom and danger of the digital badlands.

Notes:

Stewart Brand said "Information wants to be free" but he also said that "Information wants to be expensive." As corporations restrict what we can do with computers, making them simpler, like the iPad and smart phones, where restrictions are marketed as features, the Internet becomes more homogenized, and we are more willing to pay for the content provided.

Folksonomies: new media wild wild web

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Closing the Digital Frontier

Electronic/World Wide Web>Internet Article: Hirschorn, Michael (2010), Closing the Digital Frontier, The Atlantic, July/August 2010, http://www.theatlantic.com, Retrieved on -0001-11-30

Source Material [www.theatlantic.com]

Schemas

01 JAN 2010

A Wild Wild Web Manifesto

Physicality is overrated. I will strive to purchase or acquire digital versions of all things before physical. I will not print. If you don't know how the system works, then you are just a user. Users will be used. Don't be a user. The overwhelming majority of users are stupid. I don't care what stupid people think; therefore, I avoid the comments section of any site, unless it allows filtering and ranking. I will not click on the "Recommendations for You" links provided by consumer sites li...