Values of the 21st century Web
We live in a century of change. But so was said for the 20th and the 19th century… Every era has a different focus, either it may be socio-political change, economics or industry. This century seems to have a focus on high tech, especially computerized tech. The Web is a high profile product of our computerized tech, leading innovation in all its parts. It is our responsibility to go through this time with a foresight of what we want to achieve and how we’re going to get there.
Before any wishful thinking, we need to be brave and look into our shortcomings from the past. We’ve had a long history of faking a better future, posing according to public expectations and suplementing our inability to deliver the “promised land” with marketing; lots and lots of marketing. What’s the point of fixing something if we can convince ourselves that it’s not broken? Living in denial is common practice, it’s so common we give it more positive words like “hype” or “spin”. All this may provide a rather grim view but we can perceive any deviant way as simply the “lazy” way.
The high road
Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. — Theodore Roosevelt
Of course the intent is not to make things more difficult than they need to be. For one, tech is supposed to make our lives easier. Admittedly, the right thing is in most cases the most difficult task. And being honest is the first step towards doing what’s right. If we truly want a better future, there’s no reason why we should even hesitate…
Making that commitment as professionals, setting the bar at the right place and achieving realistic goals is positive, but that’s only half the battle. Public perception and adoption is the final seal of approval and what will make any tech last. That’s why there’s so much effort put into “tweaking” people’s perception. With that mindset, here are some of the “gotchas” we need to keep in mind:
Specialty
In the 20th century there was a widespread concept of becoming a specialist. A professional needed to be good at doing one thing and the collection of many different specialists would create a good team for any company. We saw this concept fail quite fast with technologists of the Web, where just doing one thing wasn’t enough. This is not so much related with the medium as it is with innovation itself. The Web, being a highly innovative environment, demands from professionals to understand tech in a much more fundamental way; because that’s the only way innovation can be achieved.
Specialty may come back into play after the evolution of the Web slows down, where a predictable process will be preferable over a disruption. This may happen late in the 21st century, following the trajectory of other media like radio waves, assuming no radical evolution happens in other complementary industries like AI and robotics.
Longevity
We live in a blooming startup scene. Everyone knows about someone in their circle starting their own venture, if not doing it themselves. Noone is surprised with the concept of an enterprise, albeit mostly for financial gain. With so much activity it’s easy for the public to just stop listening. Demand freezes whenever there’s saturation. In that landscape, people turn to the established companies as a true measure of worth. Older companies will be valued and as the Web itself gets older, and matures, household name brands will enjoy the lion’s share of the public’s attention.
Talent
For the industry insiders, people matter more than brands, because they know how rare creative thought is. But for the public there’s still a veil of mystery around Web tech; so the trust is placed in the companies. That’s why we often see products preserving their good reputation, even after all the people instrumental to the product have left the company.
As people get more tech savvy and they are accustomed to the ways of the Web, interest may shift from the companies to the people behind the products. Observing how other creative industries have evolved we see a similar tendency in how Hollywood executes its refined process, where the priority is to find the “right” people in the key positions of any project; or how the food industry relies on the expertise of world renowned chefs. And like movie directors or chefs, web developers may enjoy the same publicity and bare similar responsibility in delivering a product with some artistry, especially in a limited timeframe.
Open source
Our previous analogy lends itself to describe how open source can exist in a fully commercial, fully corporate Internet. In cooking no one owns the ingredients a meal is made of; they are common and readily available. In film making, no one owns the techniques, processes and recording methods, a movie utilizes. Ownership is focused on the final product. Any sense of proprietary tech is purposefully harnessed and exposed as a consumable asset, to allow a reusable life-cycle.
Along those lines, the Web is an open platform and there’s already a lot of open source for tooling and building applications. This is good. It is a natural step. Having the tools should be a given, and although the low bar of entry may create the perception that anyone can make an app, the reality is more close to the fact that not everyone that has a camera is a director; not everyone that has a cooking pan is a chef…
The path to FreeDOM
We’d all like the best outcome for our world, even if it’s for selfish reasons. But lets be clear; nothing of this needs to happen. We don’t have to take the high road, complete the difficult tasks, be more efficient to provide more value. We can continue doing what we’re doing and in many cases that’s living a lie. If history teaches us anything it’s that humanity has the ability to correct its course, even after numerous sidetracks. There’ll always be the few that push us in the right direction. We only need to make sure that during our lifetime our contribution is positive , so this century’s post-mortem will not conclude that it was just a sidetrack.
