This past month Linda Wertheimer and Steven Inskeep interviewed Mr. Chris Anderson; Editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, about the up-and-coming issue of "Wired Magazine". In this issue the highly anticipated article The Web is Dead will be released.
Inskeep and Wertheimer question Anderson about the article in a very open manor. Come to find out the title is a huge over statement to what the article is truly about. Anderson was referencing the World Wide Web and not the whole Internet. This is also giving readers a little bit more understanding on the common misconception of when people refer to the Internet as the web. Where truly the web is the World Wide Web and the Internet is a more mature form of that. Anderson states later in the article "the Web is the adolescent phase of the Internet. And it's dead in the sense that the child is dead when they become an adult."
But back to the real point to the article, the World Wide Web is dead.
Steven Inskeep starts the interview out with an open statement of "We've spoken for years as though the Internet and the World Wide Web are pretty much the same thing - that they're synonyms. But you begin by pointing out that they're not." I disagree with his statement of that the Internet and the World Wide Web are synonyms; even at a young age I knew the World Wide Web was just a stepping stool to what was in store for the future. The World Wide Web is officially defined as a "Computing a vast network of linked hypertext files, stored on computers throughout the world, that can provide a computer user with information on a huge variety of subjects." (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/World+Wide+Web) Where as the Internet actually involves the World Wide Web "the single worldwide computer network that interconnects other computer networks, on which end-user services, such as World Wide Web sites or data archives, are located, enabling data and other information to be exchanged." (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Internet) To this point, Anderson's answer to the statement was that the Web was just an application to the Internet.
I never thought the Web was so intertwined into the Internet, I thought it more as a shoot off than an actual "younger form" of it. The Web is solely text, an article that you see through your browser. But the Internet involves images, MP3 files, and Netflix, the Web has nothing to do with that.
Inskeep's next point was how this whole change was going to affect the consumer. Anderson's refereed back to when people believed that "in the world of professional content, the notion was that advertising was going to support everything." My immediate thought to his statement was when early in the interview he had said the Internet allows us to go everywhere. But how would people see the advertisements? He then brought up the point of now having to pay to see the content of a site. I do not agree with that at all, the Internet is supposed to help people get access to information. And now they are going to set up even more roadblocks? It is hard enough to even sort through everything with all the bogus stuff posted on the Google search engine. I would not want to pay for information I am not even sure I actually need until I read through it. I guess it will make people more aware of what they are actually for, but I enjoy to just search through random articles. That is how I found Susan Hiller, just looking at random articles, and now I am going to have to pay for that. It is ridiculous.
I do hope Anderson is right when he said another big change coming soon on the Internet. There is just too much unneeded information that is posted on the Internet. Overall though, I found this article really information and would recommend it to anyone that is interested in the "future internet/advertisements."
Article Link:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129270704
Article Link:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129270704
