Back in March of last year I wrote a post about this idea of people being happy with just good enough user interfaces of web based applications and my feelings on the subject haven’t changed. If anything I have become even more convinced about the whole thing.
The idea that everything we do on a computer can; or should, be done with nothing more than a browser and a broadband connection is bothersome on so many levels. Firstly is the idea that broadband is even at the state where it will enable a full transition for using nothing but a browser to get all our work done is ludicrous at best.
Even with that in mind a lot of people seem to think that this is the road forward for our computing life. As Brett Nordquist said in a post this morning
That brings me to today. I still use a PC at work and home. But I’m no longer tied to Microsoft Windows. I current run Vista but it’s irrelevant to me. GMail has replaced Outlook. Google Docs has replaced Microsoft Office. Many of the utilities I used to purchase are no longer needed. The games I play are now online as are my blog, Facebook, Twitter and many other web properties where I spend the bulk of my time. I can’t think of a single program I run that requires Windows that I couldn’t live without or find a web based alternative.
While he was referring mainly to programs that run on the Windows operating system he closed out his post with the following
I hope by that time we’ll have PCs where the underlying OS is so small and reliable it fades into the background. I hope one day all I’ll need is a small form factor computer running Firefox and broadband connection.
As idyllic as that might sound and I am sure many a Linux and open source fanatic is just drooling all over themselves with the idea but if what we have today is any example it will be a half-assed world. How else would you classify a computing system that is totally reliant on a provider industry that can control your very access. Already we are seeing speed and data caps being instituted by these gatekeepers even though the wholesale rates for Internet bandwidth is dropping across the board.
In this new world of the browser dependent workflow bandwidth and access will be the new power. The problem with is that even now the US is being constantly outpaced by foreign countries. Even Canada has joined the US in the downward slide to bandwidth mediocrity and there is no improvement on the horizon. This as well doesn’t even address the disparity that will occur between the urban browser based workers and the rural areas where even now high speed broadband is something that they can only dream of or pay through the nose for.
In his post Brett talks about how things have changed since the days when networks were only in the realm of big companies and high speed meant 56k. So it might seem we have come a long way but if coming a long way means having to put up with inferior applications then it’s been a wasted 20 years. The idea that web based applications working within a single process container are in any way superior to applications being built to harness the ever increasing power in computers is half-assed. The idea that we should be totally reliant on third party access to the Internet that want to charge us more for ever decreasing access is half-assed.
For all its bluster Web 2.0 has done nothing more than make us all a bunch of people who are happy with half-assed solutions and that is a really sad place to be after 20 years.
