Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome to The New Coffee Room. We hope you enjoy your visit.


You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet
Topic Started: Aug 18 2010, 11:19 AM (302 Views)
George K
Member Avatar
Finally
The Web is Dead. Long Live the Internet

Posted Image

ou wake up and check your email on your bedside iPad — that’s one app. During breakfast you browse Facebook, Twitter, and The New York Times — three more apps. On the way to the office, you listen to a podcast on your smartphone. Another app. At work, you scroll through RSS feeds in a reader and have Skype and IM conversations. More apps. At the end of the day, you come home, make dinner while listening to Pandora, play some games on Xbox Live, and watch a movie on Netflix’s streaming service.

You’ve spent the day on the Internet — but not on the Web. And you are not alone.

This is not a trivial distinction. Over the past few years, one of the most important shifts in the digital world has been the move from the wide-open Web to semiclosed platforms that use the Internet for transport but not the browser for display. It’s driven primarily by the rise of the iPhone model of mobile computing, and it’s a world Google can’t crawl, one where HTML doesn’t rule. And it’s the world that consumers are increasingly choosing, not because they’re rejecting the idea of the Web but because these dedicated platforms often just work better or fit better into their lives (the screen comes to them, they don’t have to go to the screen). The fact that it’s easier for companies to make money on these platforms only cements the trend. Producers and consumers agree: The Web is not the culmination of the digital revolution.

A decade ago, the ascent of the Web browser as the center of the computing world appeared inevitable. It seemed just a matter of time before the Web replaced PC application software and reduced operating systems to a “poorly debugged set of device drivers,” as Netscape cofounder Marc Andreessen famously said. First Java, then Flash, then Ajax, then HTML5 — increasingly interactive online code — promised to put all apps in the cloud and replace the desktop with the webtop. Open, free, and out of control.

But there has always been an alternative path, one that saw the Web as a worthy tool but not the whole toolkit. In 1997, Wired published a now-infamous “Push!” cover story, which suggested that it was time to “kiss your browser goodbye.” The argument then was that “push” technologies such as PointCast and Microsoft’s Active Desktop would create a “radical future of media beyond the Web.”

“Sure, we’ll always have Web pages. We still have postcards and telegrams, don’t we? But the center of interactive media — increasingly, the center of gravity of all media — is moving to a post-HTML environment,” we promised nearly a decade and half ago. The examples of the time were a bit silly — a “3-D furry-muckers VR space” and “headlines sent to a pager” — but the point was altogether prescient: a glimpse of the machine-to-machine future that would be less about browsing and more about getting.
A guide to GKSR: Click

"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... "
- Mik, 6/14/08


Nothing is as effective as homeopathy.

I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles.
- Klaus, 4/29/18
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Axtremus
Member Avatar
HOLY CARP!!!
The web is not dead.

Just because it doesn't use as much bandwidth as other applications doesn't mean it's dead.

Case in point: DNS doesn't even show up in the post-2000 portion of the chart, yet DNS is used all the time. You typically exchange only a hundred or so bytes of data every time you use it, and most of the time you are not aware that you're using it. Yet I wouldn't be surprised if you use it a few times every minute you're on the Internet.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Klaus
Member Avatar
HOLY CARP!!!
True.

The graph shows that P2P and video applications consume most bandwidth. That's just because downloading a movie creates more traffic than browsing many thousand web sites. Very few web users consume the majority of bandwidth through these applications, but the majority of internet users use browsers to access content.

Also, Facebook, Twitter, NYT are HTML-based web applications. RSS is based on http, the web protocol. So what is the point of the author?
Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
George K
Member Avatar
Finally
People use the internet to download movies?

Go on! Next thing you'll be telling me that people do it for music and pron!
A guide to GKSR: Click

"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... "
- Mik, 6/14/08


Nothing is as effective as homeopathy.

I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles.
- Klaus, 4/29/18
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
jon-nyc
Member Avatar
Cheers
There is some point to be made, people do regularly use apps on an iPad or smart phone instead of a browser to interact with certain sites. Some use a fb app instead of accessing it via a browser, ou can read the FT, WSJ, or NYT via iPad apps, etc.
In my defense, I was left unsupervised.
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Axtremus
Member Avatar
HOLY CARP!!!
Heh ... if I'm writing a smartphone or iPad "app" to access contents that's already available through websites (e.g., FT, WSJ, NYT, HuffPo), I'd still use web protocols to pull the data from the servers, and then just display them differently to make it work better for the user. The stats would still count that traffic in the "web" bucket.

I believe the iPhone OS has provided more ample APIs to facilitate that kind of programming. Perhaps Copper can share his insight on this one.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Klaus
Member Avatar
HOLY CARP!!!
OK, but even these apps do technically all build up on the http protocol, which is the network protocol on which the WWW is based. This means that even if a browser-based user interface did not exist, it would typically only take a few lines of JavaScript code to turn it into a browser application.
Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
jon-nyc
Member Avatar
Cheers
The apps allow you to do a lot offline. I can download the entire copy of the FT onto my ipad, and then read it on the train.
In my defense, I was left unsupervised.
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
John D'Oh
Member Avatar
MAMIL
I think it's safe to say that newsgroups are dead. I used to love those things.
What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket?
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
KlavierBauer
Member Avatar
HOLY CARP!!!
True, people are using mobile platforms to access the Internet - but you're still accessing the web.
The chart is flawed a bit - the largest consumer of bandwidth is video - and most of that video resides on web sites. On-demand video is what many of us do with the Internet. Be it fancast or hulu or youtube, video is how many of us use the web. It is however, still the web.
When you write an iPhone app that utilizes facebook's API to allow you to control and interact with facebook remotely, you're still using the web to do it.
I guess first we have to define "web." Only URLs with "www" at the beginning? Anything using Hyper Text Transfer Protocol to transfer data? Anything coming from the massive network or "web" of computers we call the Internet? It's hard to compare ambiguous data types like "video" and "web" with defined types and protocols like http, rss, ftp and so on.

If you're moving data from a web-server, I think it's safe to say you're creating web traffic. This would include all mobile apps, streaming audio, video, and just about everything else.
The web definitely isn't dead.

John: Newsgroups are definitely not dead. It's still by far the fastest way to download anything worth while. P2P (torrents, etc.) are still far too slow compared to the full http speeds possible with newsgroups.
"I realize you want him to touch you all over and give you babies, but his handling of the PR side really did screw the pooch." - Ivory Thumper
"He said sleepily: "Don't worry mom, my dick is like hot logs in the morning." - Apple

Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
The 89th Key
Member Avatar

Yes, but what about the tubes, trucks, and just-the-other-day-i-got-email-sent-to-me?
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
John D'Oh
Member Avatar
MAMIL
KlavierBauer
Aug 19 2010, 10:44 AM
John: Newsgroups are definitely not dead. It's still by far the fastest way to download anything worth while. P2P (torrents, etc.) are still far too slow compared to the full http speeds possible with newsgroups.
OK, I stand corrected. They're dead except for pr0n-movie downloads.
What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket?
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Axtremus
Member Avatar
HOLY CARP!!!
KB
 
On-demand video is what many of us do with the Internet.
More than that ... big companies -- like Verizon with its FiOS TV service, AT&T with its U-verse TV service, and pretty much all your cable TV companies -- use IP backbones to distribute videos (TV programming, on-demand or otherwise). FiOS TV and U-verse TV are actually "switched" IP-TV, so even for the last mile to your home, TV video content gets to you in IP packets.

I'm just not sure whether the Wired magazine count those IP-TV content into their stats ... too lazy to read about the methodology. :shrug:
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
KlavierBauer
Member Avatar
HOLY CARP!!!
Ax: I'm arguably ignorant about IPTV, so I'm up for correction if needed.
From what I've read though, IPTV had many "planned" deployments for the US, but no major ones yet. Germany and France are the two biggest providers of IPTV (the "switched" ip tv format you mentioned earlier), with the US further down the list, showing offerings only by ATT.

Still - it's different to encode data and transfer it via TCP/IP than to encode and send the same information via HTTP.
Vonage for example doesn't necessarily count as web traffic - nor should it, while "video" most definitely includes web services such as "hulu" yet doesn't count as "web" traffic.

John: Pr0n? Why would you download Pr0n via newsgroups? Are you THAT picky (or patient)? You know there are streaming sites for that right?
Newsgroups are valuable for speed - meaning larger downloads. I'm not going to grab 1080p video anywhere online to stream to my TV, because it will take way too long to download, but a decent newsgroup service will have that same content to me in no time.
That being said, my newsgroups days are long over (I was into newsgroups over 10 years ago, but now - not at all). I just know plenty of folks who still prefer newsgroups to P2P given that all of the same content is there, and can be downloaded about 10x as fast.
"I realize you want him to touch you all over and give you babies, but his handling of the PR side really did screw the pooch." - Ivory Thumper
"He said sleepily: "Don't worry mom, my dick is like hot logs in the morning." - Apple

Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Axtremus
Member Avatar
HOLY CARP!!!
Examples:

1. AT&T U-verse is "IP-TV" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-verse )

2. Verizon FiOS' "video on demand" stuff is also "IP-TV" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verizon_FiOS )
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
KlavierBauer
Member Avatar
HOLY CARP!!!
Yes - and as % of market share they are pretty low, while as a % of bandwidth they are relatively high.
The data persistence of video is routinely 50% or higher, while data persistence with conventional IP traffic is around 5%. This means that an ISP utilizing IPTV technologies has to provide much larger bandwidth to do any SD or HD content. Most twisted pair copper lines making up most "last mile" connections between CO and consumer won't be able to carry this, hence fiber and satellite hybrids. Satellites can carry over 100GB/s, so the future will surely be in this vein.

It's a growing industry for sure - but it isn't web traffic, and I don't think it's fair to use it's numbers as a way of showing the decrease in web usage. It's a repurposing of technology more than it is a shift from one form of Internet usage to another as the graph suggests.
"I realize you want him to touch you all over and give you babies, but his handling of the PR side really did screw the pooch." - Ivory Thumper
"He said sleepily: "Don't worry mom, my dick is like hot logs in the morning." - Apple

Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
John D'Oh
Member Avatar
MAMIL
KlavierBauer
Aug 19 2010, 12:47 PM
John: Pr0n? Why would you download Pr0n via newsgroups? Are you THAT picky (or patient)? You know there are streaming sites for that right?
Newsgroups are valuable for speed - meaning larger downloads. I'm not going to grab 1080p video anywhere online to stream to my TV, because it will take way too long to download, but a decent newsgroup service will have that same content to me in no time.
That being said, my newsgroups days are long over (I was into newsgroups over 10 years ago, but now - not at all). I just know plenty of folks who still prefer newsgroups to P2P given that all of the same content is there, and can be downloaded about 10x as fast.
I was kidding - the Groups pretty much died for me when Google took over DejaNews. The spam is too all-pervasive, and most of the smarter posters left for places like this, which gives us some idea of just how dumb the people left behind must be :lol:
What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket?
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
George K
Member Avatar
Finally
John D'Oh
Aug 19 2010, 01:43 PM
most of the smarter posters left for places like this, which gives us some idea of just how dumb the people left behind must be :lol:
There are those that will say you got that exactly backwards. :lol2:

Long live usenet!
A guide to GKSR: Click

"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... "
- Mik, 6/14/08


Nothing is as effective as homeopathy.

I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles.
- Klaus, 4/29/18
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
KlavierBauer
Member Avatar
HOLY CARP!!!
:D
"I realize you want him to touch you all over and give you babies, but his handling of the PR side really did screw the pooch." - Ivory Thumper
"He said sleepily: "Don't worry mom, my dick is like hot logs in the morning." - Apple

Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
ZetaBoards - Free Forum Hosting
Free Forums. Reliable service with over 8 years of experience.
Learn More · Sign-up for Free
« Previous Topic · The New Coffee Room · Next Topic »
Add Reply