Silicon Insider: The Uncertain Future of the Net
B U R L I N G A M E, Calif., Jan. 30, 2001 -- This week, the world's leading figures in technology, business and politics are meeting at the Davos conference in Switzerland to discuss the future of the Internet. One question: How the hell would they know?
If we've seen one thing proven in tech in the last five years, it isthat no one — especially no one in a position of authority — has yet been able to accurately predict where the Internet is going.
Those who saw it as a flash in the pan looked like fools when it took over the wired world; while thosewho saw it as a techno-utopia that would enlighten (and enrich) the world,now hold stock options that are under water.
All those dot-commie ex-millionaires sure didn't see what was coming — that's why they're all fleeing back into business school. Venturecapitalists, those veteran investors hired precisely because they coulddivine the high-tech future, didn't know either — that's why they are allalready bobbing and weaving over the health of their rapidly maturing funds.
And God knows the so-called experts in the field didn't have a clue — justask reporters at those Sears catalog-thick New Economy magazines that nowcould be printed on an envelope. Even the two guys who got it right thefirst time, Jim Clark and Marc Andreesen of Netscape, are looking a lotless brilliant these days.
Illiterate Glitterati?
Of the two celebrity speakers this week on the subject, Bill Gatesmissed the Net completely, then tried to make up for lost ground with the usualMicrosoft policy of annihilating anyone ahead of them. The other, PierreOmidyar of eBay (trust me on this, because I was there), was just as amazedby what happened as everybody else. He just happened to make billions fromit. Besides, if either of these estimable gentlemen actually saw a hugeuntapped opportunity in cyberspace, do you think they'd tell us?
In other words, the opinions about the future of the Net held by theassembled glitterati at Davos are no more — and probably less — valid than those held by the anti-globalism protesters setting fires outside. In fact,given that these protests were probably organized worldwide (no small ironythere) over the Net, probably means the protesters sense of the Internet'sfuture are probably even more accurate.
Of course, none of this keeps U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan from solemnly intoning that the real task is get the Net into the hands of thatmajority of the world's population that hasn't never even made a telephonecall. Apparently the planet will be a better place when the Third Worldwill be able to join its industrialized brethren in being spammed, looking atporn pictures, and not having orders delivered from e-commerce companies.Boy, now that's social justice!
Anyway, as long as the Davos divas and the frequent flier anarchists arehaving their say, I might as well be presumptuous enough to suggest, withoutany axe to grind, some real-life futureNet scenarios for the rest of us.
The Fortress Net
No matter what you might have thought, America Online isnot an Internet company. In fact, it doesn't want you to use the Web atall. Instead, it wants you stay right there in AOLand, shopping at AOL sites,getting your brain fried by AOL banners. Steve Case et al would beperfectly happy if you never surfed the Web, and he is betting the purchase ofTime-Warner will make sure you'll never want to.
Why? Because he doesn't make any money when you're hanging out in some non-AOL approved geneology site.
Yahoo! used to be more wide-open and understanding, … until theTime-Warner deal. Now, by default, it too may have to play big time M&Awith Disney and others to create its own self-contained online reality.
The result could well be an Internet that isn't an Internet at all, buta handful of self-contained cyber-citystates — places where you live and workand play under the benevolent eye of the owners. You'd rarely ever want orneed to venture out beyond the walls, and you would do so in trepidation,because "no man's land" between the great portal fortresses would be a placeof predators and criminals and barbarians. And you would happily pay your$14.95 per month base rate, even give up your rights, not to have to liveout there.
Another possibility is that the portals fail in their land grab, and the Net reverts to chaos — only now, with billions ofparticipants from around the world, on a much higher order. Think middle Europe duringthe Roman Empire: Goths, Huns, Visigoths and the whole nasty howling crowdwaiting to pounce on any passerby or careless legion.
Civilization huddlesin little pockets and tries to hold on. … or on the case of the Web,simply opts out, returning to intranets and secure e-mail. Meanwhile the Web, aroaring chaos, waits a generation for a conqueror to give it structure and(hopefully a positive) purpose.
Ghost in the Machine
There was a lot of talk a few years ago aboutsoftware agents. These are applets that act as surrogates on the Web fortheir owner, racing about at the speed of light comparison shopping for say,the best mortgage rate or a 1967 Pontiac GTO. With a few less-than-notableexceptions, agents have fallen out of the public consciousness. But theyare still standing in the wings, waiting for a faster Net and quickerprocessors. Think 2005.
When they come, agents will very likely split the Net in two. On oneside will be the human Web: slow, richly graphic, retail-oriented andcomparatively genteel. On the other side will be the shadowlands: vast,empty, wholesale, and filled with wraiths roaring about on missions.
Itwill also be, in a cyber-sense, quite violent, with hunter agents sent by sellersto seek out human customers being blocked by defender agents protectingtheir human owners. All of this will happen at a literally unimaginable pace,with trillions of transactions, collisions and searches taking place everysecond, all of it out of sight.
In many ways, this other Web will be the real Internet, the humanfront-end a mere appendage. The interesting question is whether humanbeings, their tasks handled by agents, will use the Internet at all — letting the shadowlands become a complete world devoid of all non-silicon life.
Mirror Image
Finally, the most likely possibility: the Internet grows tosufficient complexity and richness that it is essentially indistinguishablefrom the natural world. Thanks to 10 billion points of entry, from thetoaster to the cell phone, a billion Web sites, broadband content and ageneral failure of controls on speech, etc., the Web becomes a seamlessextension of daily life.
It resembles a great city, with mansions andslums, artists and bums, rich folks racing by in limousines, crooks lurking inalleys and children sitting at their desks in classrooms. It contains allof the excitement, boredom, lust and cruelty of the human condition.
And that, of course, is the problem. Part of the appeal of the Internetis that it is different from daily life, somehow stranger and brighter andquicker than our quotidian existence. When it becomes just like everythingelse, we will likely use it more but enjoy it less. It'll just be there,used but unnoticed, like the phone system.
I've already noticed that manyof my friends who were Web pioneers have now lost their obsession and surf thenet less and less. We may all reach that point in the next 18 months.
So the lesson for the assembled multitudes inside and outside the Davoshall in Switzerland this week? No matter what you predict about the Net, it isprobably wrong. If you are right, you probably won't like it. If you tryto control the future, it will elude you. And the most likely fate of theInternet is one so prosaic you probably won't need to ever talk about itagain.
Michael S. Malone, once called “the Boswell of Silicon Valley,” is editor of Forbes ASAP magazine. His work as the nation’s first daily high-tech reporter at the San Jose Mercury-News sparked the writing of his critically acclaimed The Big Score: The Billion Dollar Story of Silicon Valley, which went on to become a public TV series. He has written several other highly praised business books and a novel about Silicon Valley, where he was raised. For more, go to Forbes.com. And you can talk back to Silicon Insider via e-mail or through an ongoing bulletin board.