Thoughts from the CEA Show 2006
Having attended the CEA Show in Las Vegas for the past few days, I have become increasing convinced that a theory of mine is about to come true: the Internet will die.
I believe things die when they become ubiquitous because when something is everywhere it is no longer seen. Consider, as a prime example, the transistor. I remember as a kid in the 1950s when consumers became aware of transistors because of their use in portable radios. Until that time, any portable radio was very bulky and heavy and didn’t have especially good reception. Transistors changed that. For a while, it seemed, everyone walked around with transistor radios held against their ears. The portable radio was no longer considered a “radio,” but was generally called a “transistor” as in “I’m going to listen to my transistor.”
As the boom in the sale of transistor radios continued, the news about the potential of transistors to change the world increased as well. It became generally accepted that transistors would change the world. They would be everywhere. The predictions were correct: transistors did change the world and they are everywhere. The point is, that they are so “everywhere” that they are invisible. People do not think of transistors at all. The Headlines about how transistors would change the world no longer exist. Nobody ever says “I’m going to turn on my transistor” anymore. Ultimate success leads to ubiquity; ubiquity leads to invisibility; invisibility, for all practical purposes, leads to death.
The single most dominant trend that I took away from the CES show was the crushing evolution of the Internet and the final stages of the emergence of the networked world. The television and the Internet are merging. Telecommunications and the Internet are merging. Entertainment and the Internet are merging. The Internet is becoming ubiquitous. It is in the early stages of becoming invisible. We are not very far from the phrase “I’m going to log on to the Internet now” becoming as rarely used as the phrase “I’m going to turn on my transistor.” We will simply live in a networked world just as we live in a world where the transistor is everywhere. The Internet will truly change the world, just as the transistor did indeed change the world. And, just as in the case of the transistor, we will all take this change for granted, and not give much thought to it, just accepting it as “the way things are.” That is, until the next benchmark event occurs and then maybe someone will say something like “I remember when I was a kid people were also saying that the Internet would change the world also ….”
3 Comments:
As for death of the Internet… hummm. Great prediction, BUT I chose to believe it is just terminology. By replacing the term “transistor” with “radio” you end up in a totally different thought process. Radio and TV are so close a relative that some see them as identical twins (especially when looked at on certain wave-form monitors). Sure - they have different personalities… use different transmission frequencies and TV includes a picture, but it’s all wireless communications. The same wireless communications used for today’s satellite radio, HDTV, military communications. It may be wireless communications that allows for cows and horses to “hear the earthquake” before the earthquake happens (but yes, that is a different story).
Zoom past today… past HDTV, plasma and LCD. Forget about today’s infant merging of TV, radio and Internet (web-TV, listening to radio online, downloading boot-leg movies). Fly past the soon to be common interactive digital TV where you can get detailed info about, and immediately order, the cloths being worn by movie stars walking live on the red carpet. Start thinking virtual reality experiences that are so real you are experiencing the event: like Star Trek or Arnold Schwartenhager movies about the planet Mars where you feel temperatures, smell smells, feel cold: not just via brain stimulation, but an actual change in your local environment all artificially created. No longer are key-boards and mouse, but everything is smart and programmed so when that when my house hears me fall down the steps the ambulance is automatically called. The fridge, knowing I like to have a full gallon of milk in reserve, orders a refill automatically from the store for delivery. It’s the George Jetsons on steroids.
I totally agree it will not be called the Internet. Its already loosing its identity as “online” as the youth are already saying “gonna get on the computer” assuming that box is already hooked online and ready to go.
In a year or two the Internet will be transmitting smells (actually recreating or replicating those smells on the receiver’s side)… will project realistic holographic movies and change the local temperature / climate around the computer being viewed (so when the movie shows a snow scene, the viewers gets chilled). The once called “Internet” will loose its identity as the “information highway” in as little as two generations from now -- just like the airwaves did when TV came out to “replace” radio.
After the entire Internet goes wireless, I predict that some professor of Shrinkology will stand before his class and say something that makes his class laugh hysterically: “Yes: We know there are two types of communications in the world: human communications and connected communications. But just 40 years ago, the world tried to segment all its connected communications into dozens of different items, calling them TV, radio, DVD, CD, Internet, and the like. Now, its as simple as your are connected or you’re not. They even use to use wires and fibers to get that information from one place to another. Now, it’s all done wireless. So I propose we observe a moment of silence and thank the early inventor of what has become the world’s communications system: a fellow named Marconi, who first invented the radio – for THAT was the birth of connected communications, even tough at the time it was anything BUT connected."
Doug, the Internet bit made me wonder about security. What happens when all that wireless is floating around? I'm wondering about AOL stock, since that is indeed a gated community in the coming Internet world. Also a great point in the later post about the value of things -- was it Drucker who said "if you can touch it, it isn't real?"
Hi Doug:
The two most important questions about the Internet are:
1.) When will the Internet become self aware?
2.) Should the previous question have used the past tense?
Regards,
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