According to the article, the WWW is being murdered by apps. The idea is supported by the statistic which states that a lower percentage of media is delivered via the WWW than was previously. However, the lower market share is misleading. The World Wide Web is far from her deathbed.
This kind of technobabble grandstanding is not new to Wired or the geekosphere. The article claims that everyone lives in a sea of apps, and the funny part is that many of these applications and utilities are the very same ones that Wired and others have already announced the demise of .
The first application mentioned in the article is e-mail, which nerd pundits have been proclaiming dead and buried for several years. Tech sources from Wired to Slate to the Wall Street Journal have all declared the demise of e-mail and have done so for years. They've blamed SPAM and text messaging, but electronic mail is certainly relevant enough for Wired to use it as the first example.
The device used is the iPad, an example of a Netbook, which was declared dead this year. The iPad uses a Macintosh operating system, which was apparently killed off in 2006. It is manufactured by Apple, which was eulogized the same year. You may opt to surf with Firefox, but oops-that's dead too. There is a LOT of murder going on in the technological universe.
Next, Facebook and Twitter are mentioned and, surprise! ; they're dead too. Apparently, we also cruise our favourite blogs via RSS feeds, which are also running from the grave. Subsequent postmortem apps like Instant Messenger and and Netflix also get mentioned. Yes, the information age is controlled by a sea of zombies.
In recent memory, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Linux, Apple, and even the iPod have all been given funerals. This may come as a shock to the majority of you reading this article, because through Google (another corpse) I know that the vast majority of you are utilizing at least one of these to read this article.
Your next job may come via a resume made on Microsoft Office, which as you may have guessed, is also deceased. The funky graphics you see here are courtesy of Java and Flash, which Wired says are especially passed their expiry date. On the subway you are probably reading, but it better not be a newspaper or a Kindle book, because those are long gone as well. After work you might want to kick back and watch the Red Sox game, but it won't be on that black ornament known as the television, which no longer exists, haven't you heard? And you best not plug a Wii into that plastic coffin, because it is just a fart in a windstorm as well.
Bye the way, the Wired article is actually an illusion, because magazines ceased to exist half a decade ago.
Wired enjoys the role of the Grim Reaper, but the thing is, they're almost always dead wrong. While people do indeed use the World Wide Web for less of their information, it still garners a huge market share. We also use more and more IT - we have more devices in more households with a greater percentage of our work and play spent using them. While the WWW does gain a slightly smaller market share than it used to, the market itself is infinitely larger. Technology is no longer the bastion of the businessman; everyone from your gruff uncle to aged grandmother is plugged in. And that will not cease regardless of who proclaims it.
Wired and others need things to write about, topics that will garner our attention. This need for publicity combined with our desire to be one step ahead of the curve fuels the continual announcement that our information delivery systems are worm feed. Decades-old inventions like the World Wide Web are like that savvy grandmother- proof that advanced age does not render something useless.
Then again you probably aren't reading this article, since it was originally published on a Blog, which is also a cadaver.
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