On today's BBC "Analysis", there's a
little segment on the issue of
personal computers being obsolete because of the rise of The Internet.
Supposedly, we're going to be using our televisions or mobile phones in
place of them. The whole segment hinges on the statement of MS that the
desktop PC is dead and that the future is The Internet and we'd all better
get used to it.
This whole "the Internet is the Platform" is rather amusing when you think
about it. It's basically Mainframe thinking. It's also about taking
control of peoples data away from them, and transferring ownership of that
data to the corporations.
Granted you have plenty of people that use computers to play games, surf,
do email, and *maybe* a little light word processing or spreadsheet usage.
They could care less about thier data or thier privicy.
OTOH, you have those of us that are writing software, articles, and books,
or creating music and video. You also have people with either very slow, or
no internet access. Plus there are the people that just value their
privacy.
While the first group might sucker into this "Internet is the Platform", how
many of the second group will?
For certain types of users, it might make sense, but one size does not fit
all. Take for example the computers available right now that are targeted
at home use. You have handhelds, mini-laptops, laptops, giant-laptops,
desktops, mini-systems, and power-user setups, video game consoles and
set-top boxes. Each of these is a computer, each has its own "niche".
While some can be replaced by others, others can't. For example very few
laptops come even close to being able to take the place of a "power-user
setup", yet a mini-system, video game console, and set-top box are largely
the same system and could largely be replaced by the "Internet is the
Platform" idea.
Am I making sense, or just rambling, who knows. All I know is that I'm not
the least bit interested in the "Internet is the Platform", and I'm beating
that there are a lot of other people that feel that way. At the same time I
fear the corporations and governments might just force this down our
throats.
Zane