The web is dead. Who cares?

Those graphical sites are becoming a smaller part of the bustling traffic on the Internet, but that's OK.


Let's face it, all this talk of the Web's rapidly diminishing importance is simply "inside baseball" palaver for many cybernauts who just want to get things done and don't care about what enables them to do it. To them, it doesn't matter that what they see in their browsers represents less than a quarter of the traffic on the Internet and is shrinking, or that most of the traffic is consumed by peer-to-peer file transfers, e-mail (90 percent of which is spam), corporate virtual private network traffic, machine-to-machine APIs, Skype calls, interactive online games, Xbox Live players, iTunes users, voice over IP phone calls, chatting, Netflix streaming movies, and so on.

Wired's Chris Anderson is absolutely right when he writes in his obituary for the Web: "Openness is a wonderful thing in the nonmonetary economy of peer production. But eventually our tolerance for the delirious chaos of infinite competition finds its limits. Much as we love freedom and choice, we also love things that just work, reliably and seamlessly."

So the Web is dying. Why should we care? The answer to that question lies in the paradigm that will replace the untidy world created by openess and the nonmonetary economy. That world is not unlike the one that some say will be created by the Google-Verizon "framework" that's predicted to destroy net neutrality on the Internet. It's one that Anderson describes as inevitable. "It is the cycle of capitalism," he writes. "The story of industrial revolutions, after all, is a story of battles over control. A technology is invented, it spreads, a thousand flowers bloom, and then someone finds a way to own it, locking out others. It happens every time."

Will it happen again? That remains to be seen. But its inevitability is assured if the only response to the call that the Web is dead is, "who cares?"

Join the Good Gear Guide newsletter!

Error: Please check your email address.

Tags webinternet



John P. Mello Jr.

PC World (US online)

Most Popular Reviews

Follow Us

Best Deals on GoodGearGuide

Latest News Articles


GGG Evaluation Team

Kathy Cassidy



Anthony Grifoni



Steph Mundell



Andrew Mitsi



Simon Harriott



Latest Jobs

Don’t have an account? Sign up here

Don't have an account? Sign up now

Forgot password?