August
1 is World Wide Web Day. Will you
celebrate such a day? How could or
should one honor this day?
Some
companies wouldn’t exist if there were no web – Google, Amazon, Facebook,
Airbnb, Uber – and many things would be vastly different without the
Internet. It would be 1985, a time when
things were done manually, when communication was done in person, when the
physical world created barriers, and when books were made out of paper and sold
in stores.
The
web is continuing to grow, expand, change, and challenge life as we know
it. There have been mini-revolutions,
from shopping patterns and ebooks to email and social media, but none of these things
will compare to the next phase of what develops online.
In fact, the next stage could be the perfecting of the changes that have resulted with the digitization of life. Or the next stage could be a revolt to the revolution. I don’t mean a backlash or a protest against technology – no, that’ll be phase three when robotics and invasive, spying software, hackers and government intrusions force people to look for an alternate network.
Phase two will be disrupters to disrupters. For instance, Uber upends taxis now, just as Priceline reduces travel agents to order-taking. But what happens when there becomes competition to Google, Amazon, Twitter and others who seem like kings? Further, what happens when not just a competitor arises – but a new technology comes about to completely displace an existing one?
In fact, the next stage could be the perfecting of the changes that have resulted with the digitization of life. Or the next stage could be a revolt to the revolution. I don’t mean a backlash or a protest against technology – no, that’ll be phase three when robotics and invasive, spying software, hackers and government intrusions force people to look for an alternate network.
Phase two will be disrupters to disrupters. For instance, Uber upends taxis now, just as Priceline reduces travel agents to order-taking. But what happens when there becomes competition to Google, Amazon, Twitter and others who seem like kings? Further, what happens when not just a competitor arises – but a new technology comes about to completely displace an existing one?
To
celebrate WWW Day is something that comes with mixed emotions. On the one hand, it honors progress and a
visionary future, but it also tramples on the present, treating it like a
distant past from the horse and buggy era.
We don’t want to contribute to the demise of the world we’re born into,
but we don’t want to miss a chance to make it better, faster, cheaper, and
easier to access.
When
planes soared past trains and buses, few cried. When television surpassed radio, no one got
depressed. When autos replaced horses,
the world cheered. But the Internet
comes with mixed emotions. There are many more plusses to outweigh the
negatives – but the potential for the negative is increasing and comes with higher
stakes. We’re becoming addicted to – and
dependent upon clicking our lives away.
We all do it -- and it’s getting to be alarming.
Celebrate
World Wide Web Day, but don’t forget to touch the real world that’s outside the
plastic box in your palm.
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Brian
Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and
not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email
him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in
the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2015
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