Are humans predisposed to ruin everything we touch? Give us the world, we’ll deforest and butcher it. Give us sliced bread and we’ll make Spam for it. Give us the coffee bean, we’ll burn it on every corner. Give us the fucking moon (and give us laser-beams) and Steve Koonin will propose burning a Coca Cola logo on it with a laser. Give us the power to create the internet and we’ll figure out a way to make it into television. Or basic cable.
Me, myself and others have been warning about this for ages, but time has come to pass. We’ve created the internet of suck, and while we can still see vestiges of what it could have been, every day brings a new development taking us one step closer to jointly creating a colossal failure. Aliens will come to earth, study our history and say “wow, they almost got there, and then they created YouTube Premium Channels on XBox instead. Within months, their civilization perished.”
No, they’ll actually say it all ended just a few years into our most magnificent creation, when we all got AOL accounts. Yes, before Facebook walled us in our gardens, Steve Case had a grand vision for the internet, and it was AOL merged with Time Warner. You’ve got mail and you’ve got movies. Yahoo, what more could I possibly want from the internet? While not a single dime of actual money was produced by all this nonsense, it did raise a lot of investment money, and advertisers came and went dropping coin as they walked by, which looked like profits and got Steve and his buddies crazy rich. Rich enough that even when their vision failed so massively that even today everyone laughs at what a bad idea it was, they could still keep funding that vision by investing in the next round of suck-making.
Now, we’ve progressed a decade later and everyone is crazy hoping that Facebook can buy Netflix and turn the internet into a television programmed by your friends. The fact that anyone who has ever investigated what their friends really like to watch has died immediately from embarrassment (for them, from being their friends…) is lost on these folks. Nope, these folks keep seeking the holy grail – on demand programming, fed by what my friends recommend, tailored to my likes and dislikes and all served up with some advertising that is oh-so-relevant to me that I won’t even want to change the channel, or swipe the screen. From Skyfall in Scotland to Omega Watch online I go, because that’s what I and you have always wanted to do – shop smarter. Watch smarter. Consume smarter. Suck smarter.
Yes, I know, we have our Wikipedia and our Internet Archive, our memes and our rediscoveries of some awesome stuff. Those will likely stick around – humans like charity projects and we’re pretty good at making sure we stay amused, so there will always be room for a little quirkiness on the net. But remember, we had both Robin Byrd and Big Bird on regular old television, so that’s nothing new.
Yes, too, we now have our connected 3D printers and the internet of things to glom on to, and they hold lots of potential. But they also bring real threats to what the internet could become. You think the piracy wars have been bad for internet innovation and freedom? Imagine what will happen when that same internet doesn’t just run your refrigerator but also a 747 capable of falling from the sky, and that 3D printer can copy and print an artificial nuclear bomb, not just the Beatles. We’ll need to save the world from ourselves, and that means more regulation, more calls for walled gardens and more suck.
I was promised virtual reality and unfettered democracy, and all I seem to be getting is HBO Go for PS3. This is the future?
Yes, yes it is. If I am lucky, they’ll get bought by Facebook, who will also buy Netflix and GetGlue. Before long, my fridge will be stocked with FreshDirect groceries and Seamless web takeout I never even had to order, because I drooled on my iPad while watching their food in some movie. I won’t have to worry about viruses in my NeTcafe Coffee pot, and the deep packet inspection that ensured that also makes sure I don’t’ pirate any movies from those poor Hollywood moguls. My Ikea closet will be stocked with Etsy sweaters made by seamstresses I learned about from their TedX talk and if I ever get a little sick of all this cool new future stuff, I’ll wander to the local bar, where my bartender will have my favorite drink waiting for me, sans ordering, thanks to Tappr, knowing from my Netflix history that I like shaken Martinis, not stirred.