The Death of the Internet: A Pre-Mortem
thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com
The Death of the Internet: A Pre-Mortem
1–10 of 21 posts
Re: The Death of the Internet: A Pre-Mortem
#2I have to disagree with the premise that we did the same things before the internet that we do today. Was it possible to order things remotely? Yes, but it was hard enough that most poeple wouldn't do it - they would go to their local store and just purchase an item there.
Did the average citizen communicate freely across the oceans? Not remotely. Mail was expensive, phones even more so. Can this continue without the internet? No.
Was information ever disseminated as freely as it is today? No. I have volumes of programming books which were years out of date when I purchased them to prove this.
That said, I agree that the internet is about to get a lot more expensive, especially as the ad bubble which supported so much of its growth falls apart. It will be interesting, and bittersweet, to watch how the internet evolves post-ads.
Re: The Death of the Internet: A Pre-Mortem
#3I'd agree that a sales tax on Internet-based purchases will be imposed at some point, and that seemingly going industries can be remarkably unprofitable in the long term [1]. Don't know about the long term viability of Internet ads and do wish they'd die, but it'd be nice to see data.
But the rest of the article seems to be unquantified assertions -- the SST went broke, so of course the Internet will as well; data centers cost a lot of money to maintain. One could counter with other assertions-- Apple profits and Amazon revenues are huge, etc. Data would be nice.
[1]E.g. airlines have, over six decades of operation, not returned the cost of capital. http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/02/ec...
Re: The Death of the Internet: A Pre-Mortem
#4I have to disagree with the premise that we did the same things before the internet that we do today. Was it possible to order things remotely? Yes, but it was hard enough that most poeple wouldn't do it - they would go to their local store and just purchase an item there. Did the average citizen communicate freely across the oceans? Not remotely. Mail was expensive, phones even more so. Can this continue without the…
Frankly, the internet was pretty awesome pre-ads, so I'm not too concerned. :)
Re: The Death of the Internet: A Pre-Mortem
#5At first, Amazon's data center products were huge money sinks. Startup costs. Missed cost estimates for opex. Extraordinary events. Lack of scale. It looked BAD.
Now AWS is profitable, and Amazon's management knows enough about how to run it to live with thin margins that will cause their competitors lots of pain.
Stuff is getting paid for, and stuff is getting cheaper and there is plenty of room for stuff to get even cheaper.
Re: The Death of the Internet: A Pre-Mortem
#6[deleted]
Re: The Death of the Internet: A Pre-Mortem
#7At first, Amazon's data center products were huge money sinks. Startup costs. Missed cost estimates for opex. Extraordinary events. Lack of scale. It looked BAD. Now AWS is profitable, and Amazon's management knows enough about how to run it to live with thin margins that will cause their competitors lots of pain. Stuff is getting paid for, and stuff is getting cheaper and there is plenty of room for stuff to get eve…
Stuff is becoming monetarily cheaper, but I think we've also started to see other prices we pay: social price, ecological price, etc...
Re: The Death of the Internet: A Pre-Mortem
#8This is just the rantings of some wacky doom and gloom person. The Internet's demise pales to the idea that the average American will lack running water in 2065.
Re: The Death of the Internet: A Pre-Mortem
#9Unbelievable. I am an American sitting in Budapest working on freelance translation jobs I get in seconds from my agencies all over Europe, who Skypes his wife doing research in Indiana on a daily basis and who organized his 30-year class reunion last year at the last possible moment (three days in advance) by Facebook bullying. Record turnout, too.
When I program I have up-to-the-minute solutions for nearly every technical problem I encounter (well, at least to get me started) - I HAVE CPAN. (So I'm old.) I read American news (from Budapest) while it's happening. I see video from news events that Joe Public has recorded an hour ago, and I don't need Walter Cronkite to discover things for me.
I haven't done an inter-library loan in decades. And I don't miss waiting two weeks to find out whether that book will really help.
And tonight, I read that the Internet hasn't brought anything new to the world. And that got linked on Hacker News. Post-mortem my ass. Much the same way monks were writing post-mortems of that new-fangled Gutenberg process, I mean, sure, you don't have to have a scribe write out a book by hand any more, but it's not like we never had books before that guy came along.
Idiot.
Re: The Death of the Internet: A Pre-Mortem
#10I have to disagree with the premise that we did the same things before the internet that we do today. Was it possible to order things remotely? Yes, but it was hard enough that most poeple wouldn't do it - they would go to their local store and just purchase an item there. Did the average citizen communicate freely across the oceans? Not remotely. Mail was expensive, phones even more so. Can this continue without the…
Frankly, the internet was pretty awesome pre-ads, so I'm not too concerned. :)
It was also a lot smaller!