The Web is Dead--Wired

KISS THE WEB GOODBYE: Speculation that Wired editor Chris Anderson was working on a piece that would give the last rites to the World Wide Web has turned out to be right on the money. “Over the past few years, one of the most important shifts in the digital world has been the move from the wide-open Web to semiclosed platforms that use the Internet for transport but not the browser for display,” Anderson writes in his provocative article. “It’s driven primarily by the rise of the iPhone model of mobile computing, and it’s a world Google can’t crawl, one where HTML doesn’t rule… Because the screens are smaller, such mobile traffic tends to be driven by specialty software, mostly apps, designed for a single purpose. For the sake of the optimized experience on mobile devices, users forgo the general-purpose browser. They use the Net, but not the Web. Fast beats flexible.” (8/18a)