Here’s Your Damn Flying Car

Or: The Ghost of the Web Yet to Come.

Jobs: Well, that won’t be the case.
Mossberg: Meaning you won’t be $14.99, or they won’t be $9.99?
Jobs (smiling): The prices will be the same.

We were told that on the internet, nobody would know you were a dog. We would get a sanctuary from interference by the Higher Powers - a modern piazza, where free men and women would congregate and exchange ideas, goods and services.

Instead, we got Angry Birds tracking your location, PRISM and the gorgon stare of Google Glass.

We were told that the open internet would deprecate all other networks. We would have a web of “small pieces, loosely joined”, put together with love, duct tape and open APIs, running on top of a free, open source stack. We would use RSS and we would use Atom. We would use SOAP or maybe JSON and machines would talk freely to each other, enabling all sorts of innovative services.

Instead, we got the walled gardens of Twitter and Facebook. The dungeons of the AppStore and Google Play.

We were told that the relationship between the players in the marketplace would be completely changed - to the consumer’s benefit. We would get to name our prices. The world would be our bazaar. Auctions and reverse auctions would be the way of the future. How could a supplier ever have the upper hand against a network of informed agents? Every market would be a buyer’s market!

Instead we got “the prices will be the same.” And a smile.