The End of the Internet!

It's true. The end of the Internet is coming.

Well... the Internet as we've come to know it these last 15 years has begun to undergo a massive fundamental change. Just like telephony changed from a centralized system with rigid functionality to a multifaceted "open" system with all kinds of variant ways to makecalls, the Internet has started to morph.

The Internet and "Web 2.0" have largely been computer based, operating under the general premise that information is located at a destination, like a web site, blog, or within a social destination. The start of the proliferation of powerful mobile platforms is changing that right before our eyes. Many people don't see it, but it's happening.

Mobile is the new connected medium. Sometimes it's telephony, sometimes e-mail. It can be social networking and even web destinations like those "olde-time" web pages (but optimized for mobile).

More likely though, it's an app or a bunch of apps that will unite all those technologies into a content/marketing/communication mashup. The result will be a sort of commodifying of data or information, with users focusing on the results and experience, not the medium.

The bottom line: a web site is just one piece of a larger (more sophisticated) communication array. No longer will it be the whole ball off wax, especially as phone interfaces (touch screens and ???) become the norm and the concept of the mouse click becomes totally old fashioned.

So the Internet itself is becoming analogous to wired phone lines: a necessary piece of the communications structure, but not something most users think about. Remove it and everything would fail. Functioning nicely, it's just the means to the end. And the true end is emotionally engaging content and the experiences it provides - platform and location agnostic.


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SPIA is a 2012 UX Award Winner!