August 2004: The Future of the Web?

The MANOVERBOARD Telegraph, No. 14.

Welcome to the August 2004 Telegraph. This month we briefly look at the future of the Web.

What Future?

The Web is little more than 15 years old. Built by Tim Berners-Lee and a few others at the particle physics research laboratory CERN, the World Wide Web was originally designed to contain text and hyperlinks. The big idea was that scientific information could be viewed by a browser connected to the Internet. Today, there are approximately 550 billion documents on the Web, about 56% of them in English, 8% in German, 6% in French, and 5% in Japanese. It seems that the Web is everywhere in the developed world. Is there a definable "Future" for the Web and how can we begin to think about it?

Divergent Webs?

As a design shop that focuses heavily on website design and development, MANOVERBOARD has, in fact, no benefit of foresight about the Web. However, as good students of the Internet, there appears to be three prevailing trends.

Lo-Fi: The first is what might be termed "Low-Fi," which make up the majority of sites out there today. Built using scavenged code, Website page editors, and average quality graphics, Low-Fi sites are adequate for many companies, organizations, and individuals. They are easy to produce, difficult to redesign or recode, and they degrade quickly as new content is added.

Hi-Fi: The second is what should be called "Hi-Fi." These are sites using Web standards or high-end XML-driven Flash that make use of clear design, consistent navigation and structured content. They scale up readily, provide different information feeds, and may provide different ways to read, discover, or print site information. Many of these sites are viewable on handheld devices such as Internet-connected Palm or Windows CE computers. MANOVERBOARD builds these sites.

Wi-Fi: The third is what is and will be called "Wi-Fi" -- distributing a confluence of Web-based media over broadband wireless connections. And this is where the Web perhaps gets most interesting and most "World Wide."

The Wi-Fi Web is built around mobile handsets that can unite telephone, television, fax, Email, Web, and word processing applications. On the Wi-Fi Web, a person holding an electronic handset will be able to speak to and see another person anywhere on the planet, send him or her information, wire money, and purchase products or services. With the Wi-Fi Web, actual computing (such as writing, coding, processing, and creating) will mostly take place on machines much like the desktop PCs we have now. But communicating will take place on portable, handheld devices that can be taken across states and boundaries and deliver always-on connectivity.

It's not far-fetched. Already there are very strong signs of broadband wireless growth in places like Russia and China, which can bypass the wired broadband Internet. As these networks grow, as the economies of scale for broadband wireless devices become more viable, and as handsets become cheaper to produce and sell, it seems entirely possible that what we now call "smartphones" (such as PalmOne's Treo, RIM's Blackberry, and others' Windows Mobile devices) hold the evolutionary code for the Web's progeny. A very recent report predicts that these devices will "account for some 117 million out of 833 million handsets shipped globally by 2009" but it seems likely that that number may be conservative.

The Upshot?

Reading large amounts of information is the key hurdle for the Wi-Fi Web. Today, very few people are willing to read an entire book on their laptop, PDA, or even a high resolution monitor. Companies like The New York Times have experimented with an Electronic Edition, but it is believed that it will take many years for books and magazines to have an advantage on the Web. When this is no longer an issue, perhaps in 10 years, the Wi-Fi Web will take off and will, in fact, be the Web—a place where all communications, connectivity, and information will reside.