So... there are a lot of allegations in here that aren't really backed up by evidence. My primary objection is that even should everything this guy (who is he?) comes to pass, "the browser" will remain the Latin to the Internet's Dark Ages, a Lingua Franca to patch all the holes left by the balkanization of the "online" experience. Consider: - Help files are now and likely always will be simple pointers to HTML code that can be updated by the vendor. Regardless of "apps" that run on iOS, Android, Linux, OS X, Symbian, Cobol or Turbo Pascal, some universal, simple, plain-text-readable repository of information will serve as the "help file" for that service on any device it runs and it's simply too easy to write it once than to write it a million times. Consider: we're now using markup that can encode video, but anything you download comes with either a .txt or .pdf. - the Internet is just another app. Regardless of what sorts of wonders you have on your device, the rest of the world is still out there. I don't have a crapload of apps on my phone, but of the apps I have, fully 40% of them have web browsers built in. It's system level, and it's free, and it allows them to plug the holes, as mentioned above. - Kids break rules. Rebellion is in the DNA of every person who ever walked the earth and for every locked door there's a person wondering what's behind it. Unless your purpose is to completely cut a person off from "the Internet" they will circumvent whatever safe walls you build just because you've built them. - The larger services are just APIs. My address book speaks Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. G+ is a layer that Google sprinkles on top of the entire internet. "Sign in with Facebook" is the kudzu of the new decade. What were destinations are now building blocks that any developer or writer can plug into his content. Comply with Facebook's TOS and you're in Facebook's ecosystem. The road's still there even if AMC is no longer making cars; "the Internet" remains a collective of mutual compatibility no matter what form you choose to navigate it with. - Laptops suck for browsing. Tablets suck for typing. I don't care how dead "the internet" is; you're still going to have to write a paper about Sitting Bull in 9th grade. Tell me the difference between a tablet with a bluetooth keyboard and trackball attached and a laptop - other than the OS. It's the same as browsing the Internet through Safari or browsing the Internet through 1Password - it's still a Quartz engine. It all strikes me as myopic ("Whatsapp has won messaging, text and instant" - ORLY) and overly sensationalist. Yeah, we interact with the Internet differently on a touchscreen tablet OS than we do on the desktop. We interect with the Internet differently through a Roku or XB360 than we do through a tablet. It's still the Internet. forums.bodybuilding.com will be forums.bodybuilding.com whether or not you install tapatalk. Reddit will be Reddit whether or not you're running AlienBlue. The Wikipedia I pull up on my phone is the same Wikipedia I pull up on my laptop is the same Wikipedia I pull up on my desktop is the same Wikipedia I pull up on my Kindle. There were people that freaked out when they realized that "today's kids have never lived in a time without Internet." They were wrong, too. It's a tool, not a religion, and when you see complaints nailed to the door consider them suggestions, not heresy.
I just want to say how much I agree with this. Every time there's an advance in technology, the elders get up in arms and say "My goodness! These kids today, they'll never know what it was like to live without their newfangled gizmos. Now us, we did it the traditional way, the REAL way..." How quickly we forget. Our parents tell us that we're not like them, that they didn't grow up with all this internet, all this information coming at them; it was different, simpler. Perhaps, but our grandparents would have been saying the same of TV. Our great-grandparents of cars. Don't doubt for a second there were people saying "yeah, printed text is great and all, but it will never beat good old-fashioned handwriting." (And that person would have forgotten his ancestor, some few centuries ago, complaining that "all this written language, it's ruining the oral tradition, why I bet our kids won't ever tell each other another story out loud again...") But no, this time, for real, kids won't "get" how things used to be done, and this is a generation of stupid kids who won't figure stuff out for themselves. This time, it's definitely it.There were people that freaked out when they realized that "today's kids have never lived in a time without Internet." They were wrong, too. It's a tool, not a religion, and when you see complaints nailed to the door consider them suggestions, not heresy.
We have fallen upon evil times,
the world has waxed old and wicked.
Politics are very corrupt.
Children are no longer respectful to their elders.
Each man wants to make himself conspicuous and write a book. Narim Sin, 5000 BC I've heard maybe five versions of this and I've never been able to narrow it down. Naram-Sin, for example, ruled about 2200BC, not 5000. I really want the quote to be authentic. the mood certainly is.