"Missing the Internet and Web Revolutions - How did we?"
Submission to "From The Desk Of" at The New York Times
Paul Pangaro
[Early in 1996 The New York Times began running a column in its
Sunday Business section for which solicitations were made to the "general
public" to submit articles. Entitled "From The Desk Of" this
column appeared to offer a forum for ordinary readers to communicate to
the readership of the Times. A colleague of mine, Dave Shute, EVP
of Grasp Information Corporation, had
asked the question, Why did everyone miss the explosive growth and revolutionary
nature of the Internet and Web? This got me thinking, and I made the following
submission to the Times in April of 1996. In contradiction to their
offer to reply within a few weeks, I have never heard anything back.]
I'm not going to miss another revolution. The great and the near great missed
this last one. Why were we all hit sideways with the ballistic growth of
on-line users and Web sites in 1995? Negroponte of MIT's Media Lab, Mike
Zisman at Lotus, and Bill Gates have all said how surprised - and unprepared
- they had been. Where was their attention instead? Where was my attention
and that of the rest of us, right in the midst of it all and still unseeing?
I have seen massive technological change pass in front of my eyes before.
In the 1970s at Negroponte's first research lab at MIT, we were deeply focused
on the newest technologies of the day: color graphics (that every computer
has today), user interfaces for handling personal data (that some computers
do well today), and display screens that are the same as the room's architecture
(that Bill Gates has at home today). Back then it seemed easy to talk about
where it was all going, and we did. The idea of TV weather announcers waving
at moving, computerized clouds was "totally obvious." We enjoyed
that tautology because we thought, mistakenly, that it came with a layer
of self-awareness. We thought we could see where technology would take us,
and wanted to contribute to it (and profit too). We thought we were smart,
but maybe the wrong kind of smart. So far as revolutions go, we did not
see that we did not see.
Is the Internet-plus-Web phenomenon really a revolution? When incremental
changes become a qualitative difference in the way so many people think,
work and play, I would say it's a revolution. The skeptics who put off this
judgment seem simply to not have witnessed the actual changes, nor faced
the inevitable changes that will come.
I think I know what filled the time and kept us blind between then and now:
our persistent focus on making that next small step beyond where we happened
to be. Would this next idea really work? Is it valuable? We worked daily
on the next thing, and kept our mind away from more basic questions. We
needed to feel such incremental progress, because the technology was full
of uncertainty. "Creeping incrementalism" is the trap I now see
(this time aware of the irony in coining another tautologous phrase).
What happened all around was obvious: huge growth in networks, ever-stronger
and more-adopted standards, sillier icons now in 3d. It didn't occur to
us that some line would be crossed and all those small changes would suddenly
make a big difference.
The business press haunts us with the reminder that the Internet and the
Web each started as an academic exercise. Those of us who left academia
for the "real world challenge of business" weren't looking inside
the research world for a revolution, either. We still thought we had our
sites set, but missed it anyway. Maybe we thought that a breakthrough had
to be in commercialization or marketing, and not in the quality or originality
of the ideas. Or we hoped we would just be in the right place at the right
time, like the young Bill Gates. (If we could see a revolution coming, we
too could find profit, or fame.) Thinking about what was necessary and sufficient
for a revolution was too hard, and the cliches only confused us. "Enabling
technology" was just one more tautology that we thought we understood,
and didn't.
Yesterday a web search engine said there were 16 million web pages; today,
it says 21 million. I vow I'm not going to miss a revolution again. Sitting
at my desk with a blank pad of paper, maybe I can anticipate the next revolution.
(Look at me, a software entrepreneur dreaming of being a revolutionary.)
But perhaps a premise is wrong: that these revolutions can be seen from
inside them. And how does a revolution arise? Not from engineering, but
from human needs. From "the street", not from the lab or board
room. (How could the establishment have hoped to see it coming?)
Perhaps a lesson of this revolution lies in its form: web sites everywhere,
egalitarian networks without central control, home pages for teenagers and
General Motors alike. Size is no longer power. Everyone a presence, no one
in charge; authority condensed to an individual's choices.
Individual choice. Individuals first? That lesson of revolutions is clear.
And here my ideas begin: software that behaves differently for me than for
you, allowing identity and differences, removing the forced sameness. (For
the first time in history, we could put the "personal" into "personal
computing.") Plus I want software to capture the "why" of
my computing, in simple expressions of my purpose. Thus I tag the "what"
of my numbers and texts, and capture my values and goals and not just my
data.
Quickly my pad is flush with ideas for a next revolution. Given the dream,
the algorithms will follow, their foundations in past work of philosophers
and programmers alike. I know where to begin. Looking from where we are
today, these new systems are not recognizable as possible. But, given the
other revolutions we have witnessed, we are used to that.
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Paul Pangaro directs a consulting practice in applied cybernetics, software
design and technology strategy, founded in 1981. He and his work can be
reached via www.pangaro.com.
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