[CS-FSLUG] Death of the Net

[veritosproject at gmail.com]

On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 6:33 PM, Ed Hurst <ehurst at soulkiln.org> wrote:
> From time to time I write a blog post with something similar to the subject
> of this message. I find it entertaining to speculate and get reactions from
> others.
>
> Recently, it seemed to me the PC is about dead, displaced by the various
> palmtops, iPhones, Blackberries, etc. Even without an economic downturn,
> those on the leading edge of social fashion here in the US and Western
> Europe appear more interested in those other devices, and not even netbooks
> are taking off nearly so fast. There are a lot of complex causes why this
> should be so, but I suspect very soon only governments, business, some
> schools, and a handful of geeks will be doing the Net. The average consumer
> will see only what can be displayed on their tiny handheld devices.
>
> Just recently I listened to a bunch of youngsters referring to the Internet
> as "old school" -- all of them had various data packages on their cellphone
> devices. The economic downturn may delay things awhile, but I believe this
> is where it's going. This is not what I want to see, necessarily. I'll
> probably keep some sort of PC around until I'm dead, as long as there is one
> still working I can own. It's my favorite writing tool, and I love to write.
>
> I see servers sticking around for a long time, but the Linux Desktop will
> probably never have a chance to actually go mainstream. That has nothing to
> do with the merits of the idea, but the timing and shift of consumer tastes.
>
> What do you see?

Nothing out of the ordinary there; technologies fall by the wayside as
newer and shinier stuff comes around. Regarding mobile devices, I
think that for right now we're simply waiting for costs to go
down---currently, texting and data plans are much more expensive per
byte than the web, which is cheap enough to be nearly ubiquitous in
the western world. Just as the internet did not become mainstream
until cable and DSL were in the price range of normal people, I don't
think that mobile technologies will be ubiquitous until they are
affordable for more people.