According to my calendar, as of today, it’s been 7,300 days, (not that I’m counting). If you do the math and remember to account for leap years, that works out to a handful of days short of 20 years.
So how have the past 7,300 days been for you?
Seven thousand, three hundred days ago, a chap named Tim Berners-Lee showed off a working computer program called “WorldWideWeb”. The overall project he was working on was named “World Wide Web” which beat out his other name choices of “Information Mesh”, “Information Mine” and “Mine of Information”.
Note that the “official” 20-year anniversary was in March 2009. But that marks the day when Berners-Lee first submitted his proposal for the project:
Photo credit: Maximilien Brice/ © 2009 Cern
As a sidebar, Berners-Lee used a NeXT computer to develop his program. The NeXT computer company was started by a guy named Steve Jobs. Maybe you’ve heard of him? In 1996, Apple bought NeXT and its software technology. The NeXT operating system was the basis of today’s Mac OS. At that same time, Steve Jobs was brought back to Apple, first as a consultant, then as acting CEO and later becoming CEO. Nice to see the guy get a promotion or two.
In 1990, the original WorldWideWeb browser-editor ran on advanced computer systems owned by research labs but not by the general public. So in 1991, a universal browser was developed to run on any computer.
In 1992, the very first web page was launched.
In 1993, web browser Mosaic was released for free for both Mac and PC, the same year that the World Wide Web technology was also made freely available. And, of course, the rest is history.
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But now, 20 years later, it appears the World Wide Web is dying. Of course, the Internet is still flourishing, but the Web is not.
Why?
Smart phones and, soon enough, tablet computers.
Demand for the “desktop web” is dropping while mobile computing is increasing. Sales of iPhones and iPads have greatly surpassed computer sales at Apple. iPads are killing off netbook sales.
Smart phone sales are expected to exceed all computer sales by 2012. (Yes, that means laptops and desktops.)
Smart phones sales are expected to exceed “normal” cell phones by 2011 in North America.
Social networking and texting via cell phone has surpassed e-mail. Yes, e-mail is also dying off. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, while launching his own messaging system, said that e-mail is too complicated.
What’s happening is that, more and more, people are directly accessing information via their smart phone without the use of a web browser. When using the Internet, most folks just want to get in, find the information they need and then get out. Fewer and fewer folks are spending time surfing from site to site.
Mobile apps may each be a one-trick pony, but each pony does exactly what the user wants at that moment. No searching or surfing required. Each app links, via the Internet, to a database somewhere. No World Wide Web required.
The public generally won’t pay for access to a web site but it will pay, and is paying, for mobile apps and app subscriptions.
Most information companies have learned from their earlier “mistake” of giving their product away for free on the Web. They won’t make this same mistake in the new mobile world. If mobile apps can generate direct revenue, then it’s not hard to see in which direction business will move: away from the (free) Web.
While the World Wide Web won’t disappear, its future is perhaps like the future of newspapers which are struggling to stay relevant.
Perhaps the decline of the Web is inevitable, as predicted by Marshall McLuhan’s Four Laws of Media (Enhance-Obsolesce-Retrieve-Reverse).
Certainly, don’t take my word for it:
Wired magazine: The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet
Guardian newspaper: Will the iPhone and iPad finally kill off the Mac?
A Morgan Stanley presentation by Mary Meeker: Internet Trends
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Added March 2011: First quarter 2011 sales for Apple: 56% of its revenue came from iPads and iPhones; 13% from iPods; 20% from sales of computers; the remainder from the iTunes stores, software and peripherals.
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Added March 2017: Tim Berners-Lee writes about his current thoughts of the worldwide web.
