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The Web is Evolving, and so is its Supporting Cast

By now we're all familiar with the connection between the software we use and the hardware we use to run it. I'm typing on a 3-year old Dell Inspiron (Hey, I'm not cheap, but I am value-conscious). But I learned today that I will have to upgrade the security software I put on this computer when I bought it - it has become outmoded. This process is dynamic, ever changing. And soon, I'll have to upgrade my hardware to keep up with the new requirements I'm facing re speed and memory. New upgrades and new software and new types of content (MP3 files, MPEG files) require more processing power and more storage capacity, so we go buy new hardware, at least that's how this virtuous circle works in my house. It's exhausting to always be playing catch up and spending more on technology, but we are all pulled along by "progress," and we get off the train at our own risk.

In a similar way, the march of the Web in our lives is driving the need for improved infrastructure to give us better access to the Web. Cities can no more choose to avoid these changes than individuals can - we withdraw from this march at our own risk, making catching up that much harder when we finally are compelled to act. For instance, we increasingly need mobility options to keep up with the essential service the Web has become. Cell phones are making great strides with new features and functions, but as data devices, they still struggle with the limited bandwidth their infrastructure provides, and the large company focus on walled gardens and pay for content models is anathema to what we are used to on the Internet and the World Wide Web.

On this site and others, we're busy looking at competing approaches to such limitations. While one camp would craft software and mobile content to match the constraints of low data bandwidth (cellular and 3G), another camp would work to put in place infrastructure that has fewer such limitations (Wi Fi mesh and WiMax). Ultimately, like the memory and processing speed constraints of the early PC era, we can expect these bandwidth constraints to fade into the woodwork at some point - much of the excitement around technologies like Wi Fi mesh and WiMax has to do with providing us all with ubiquitious high-speed connectivity ahead of schedule. This infrastructure is the key to realizing the full potential in the writing of Kevin Kelly, and for people like Tim O'Reilly who talk about Web 2.0. There's that term again.

While I described those changes and the need to stay aware using the "boiling frog" analogy in a blog the other day, I think that this connection between the evolving web and the evolving infrastructure deserves more attention. What kind of infrstructure will we need to keep up with the what the Web is becoming for us?

The scope of the Web today is hard to fathom. The total number of Web pages, including those that are dynamically created upon request and document files available through links, exceeds 600 billion. That's 100 pages per person alive.

How could we create so much, so fast, so well? In fewer than 4,000 days, we have encoded half a trillion versions of our collective story and put them in front of 1 billion people, or one-sixth of the world's population. That remarkable achievement was not in anyone's 10-year plan.

The accretion of tiny marvels can numb us to the arrival of the stupendous. Today, at any Net terminal, you can get: an amazing variety of music and video, an evolving encyclopedia, weather forecasts, help wanted ads, satellite images of anyplace on Earth, up-to-the-minute news from around the globe, tax forms, TV guides, road maps with driving directions, real-time stock quotes, telephone numbers, real estate listings with virtual walk-throughs, pictures of just about anything, sports scores, places to buy almost anything, records of political contributions, library catalogs, appliance manuals, live traffic reports, archives to major newspapers - all wrapped up in an interactive index that really works. Kevin Kelly in Wired 13.08: We Are the Web

I just reread this article that Kevin Kelly wrote for Wired back in August of 2005. It's appropriate to take a look back as we approach the final days of 2005. This article goes one step further, looking back to the origins of the World Wide Web to show how much a part of our lives it has become, and how it will transform our future. Give yourselves an early Christmas present by pausing to read this article. Good job, Kevin. And pause for a moment with me to think about what these changes in how the web is used will impact business and economics.

What do these changes mean for your organization and the way you accomplish your goals and objectives? Does it make sense in 2006 to do things much the same way you did them in 2005, for instance? Do you have someone looking at the potential for disruptive change and how that will affect your organization?

We can go into the new year with some satisfaction that we are boldly entering a new era, but we should all keep in mind that infrastructure is foundational, and improvements in process and change are only as good as their underlying infrastructure. Progress begins here. That's why what's going on with the Web is relevant to what is going on with its supporting cast, that is, the wire line and wireless infrastructures that bring the Web to us. We must make sure that we have an infrastructure that will enable the Web to be all that it is bound to become.

Posted on December 15, 2005 at 12:08 PM

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