Opposing Views on the Web for 2008
Here are two comments that I just came across, from two people I like, wildly different in their interpretation of the state of the web going into 2008.
The first, from Fred Wilson:
The web is becoming more open, more mobile, more social, more playful, more intelligent, and more monetizable every day. Happy new year everyone. Let’s get busy because there’s so much opportunity out there I almost can’t believe it.
The second, from Doug Rushkoff:
I thought that (the Internet) would change people. I thought it would allow us to build a new world through which we could model new behaviors, values, and relationships. In the 90’s, I thought the experience of going online for the first time would change a person’s consciousness as much as if they had dropped acid in the 60’s (…)
Sadly, cyberspace has become just another place to do business. The question is no longer how browsing the Internet changes the way we look at the world; it’s which browser we’ll be using to buy and sell stuff in the same old world.
They’re both describing the same picture, from totally different perspectives. I think they’re both accurate, and somewhere in there, by looking from both views simultaneously, you can get a good sense of how I feel about the web these days.
By the way, as I write this I’m listening to Myriad Harbor by The New Pornographers. I always feel somehow like it’s a song about kicking around in New York City at the end of time. Optmistic, but conveying a sense that the clock has somehow run down somewhere. It’s a perfect soundtrack to those two discussions I pointed to above. And a good song for kicking off 2008.
