Everyone seems to be embracing a collapsed backbone technology today. However, the interesting question is how much internetworking will be done on the floor and how much will be done in the basement. The internetworking that goes on the floor must absolutely be plug-and-play, while the more complex functions will be collapsed into the basement.
Managers simply won’t put their main computer systems, won’t put everyone’s desktop computer on the Internet. What good is it if entry-level clerks are spending their time browsing the World Wide Web? That’s not what they’re being paid to do. At the same time, you’re opening up your corporate information structure to the outside world.
I love the Internet. It’s going to thrive, and I’m going to be a part of it. It’s that in order for it to thrive, we must confront tough questions. It’s not easy to admit that most of what’s on the Internet is irrelevant to what I’m interested in. In some way, the computer is a wonderful ostrich hole into which we can stick our heads and our minds but still the world goes on.
The Internet is composed of extraordinarily cheap and parsimonious people who will go way out of their way, for example, to avoid spending 50 cents on a long-distance phone call. You’ve met them. I think they will be equally stingy with their digital cash. People don’t trust sites on-line. If I go down the block and buy something from a merchant, I trust that when there’s cash exchanged, I’m going to get the goods and I’m not going to get ripped off. On-line I’m not so sure about that. The business that’s here today, it can disappear tomorrow, change its e-mail address. I may easily get burned. That’s not to say don’t make World Wide Web browsers. They’re fun, they’re enjoyable, but they’re grossly oversold.
I do not perceive an upcoming fountain of commerce over the World Wide Web for a number of reasons. The Internet and computer interactions will not replace classical commercial interactions because the Internet and the World Wide Web are missing an important ingredient salespeople. We techies think, “Oh, wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world without the salesdroids, blah, aren’t they horrible.” However, when somebody needs to buy something, whether it’s 5,000 CD-ROM drives or a Toyota Camry, one expects to be able to talk to and speak with a salesperson who will be there live in front of you, for reasons of trust, commitment, a sense of having a person to help grease the gears of commerce. I don’t think the World Wide Web will ever replace that person.
The amount of time I save by being able to find a piece of information on-line is almost exactly negated by how much time I waste every day by being on-line … The problem with intelligent agents and filters is that they can never do anything more than a crude approximation of my desires and wants. The thing that I do want a machine to solve is something that a machine can’t solve namely, “give me only the e-mail that is essential in my work.” For me to program that is for me to know what is essential in my work, and I don’t know that. It changes every 20 minutes. As an example, I would never in my life program an artificial intelligent agent to tell me what’s happening in Oklahoma City. Yet, all of a sudden last April, a bomb goes off and everything in Oklahoma City is important and essential.
Data warehousing will continue to be very hot because it’s extremely beneficial to companies. Multimedia will be important because it enables a wide range of applications in the area of training and education, as well as commercial retailing applications designed to run on kiosks. And the Web will definitely change the nature of applications. The products that we’ll be coming out with will be very different from what is available today. Most Internet products came out of academia or had basic capabilities that appealed to lots of users. The next generation of products will be integrated with corporate data and drive computing back to the servers. We’ll see more componentware coming off the net as opposed to software-heavy clients that create lots of management issues.
No matter what circumstances we face or predilections we harbor, the business of living is love. Getting love and keeping love. Manufacturing love. Making love. Making love stay. And no worldwide web of cool chips and hot wires is going to change that. So just shut up about your Brave New World, bub; we’ve all still got to live in the frightened old one.
The technology will survive, it will remain useful, but the hype will cool. Protocol will be refined, and all the free goodies likely will evaporate. There will still be interesting stuff going on, but the shrill messiahs will latch onto something else. The rest of us will be able to get some work done. There is something revolutionary happening here, we have this great new way to find out stuff. But the Internet is not about to reconfigure the human heart or change anything that matters. What matters is what always has mattered; what always will matter. It is distressing whenever humans decide that some technology or other is going to substantially alter their lives.
I feel pretty cranky … kick-the-neighbor’s-cat cranky … I’m weary of the pretension and condescension of those who believe nirvana is here, frying quietly in the circuits of some magic box. I’m sick of the cyber hype … It’s more Edgar Cayce than Carl Jung out there, Boopsie. It will not last in this form, no matter how many obsessives are out there. Already I know reasonable folks who’ve decided that cruising the Net is about as vapid an exercise as cruising the mall, looking at stuff they don’t necessarily want to buy. Granted the Net’s much bigger, there’s lots more stuff that one doesn’t want to buy (or buy into) but the fascination eventually wears off … Besides, the telecommunications companies have caught on and sooner or later they’re going to impose some capitalist rationality on the whole system. It’s going to cost more – a lot more.