Closing the Digital Frontier

Closing the Digital Frontier
The era of the Web browser’s dominance is coming to a close. And the Internet’s founding ideology—that information wants to be free, and that attempts to constrain it are not only hopeless but immoral— suddenly seems naive and stale in the new age of apps, smart phones, and pricing plans. What will this mean for the future of the media—and of the Web itself?

June 18, 2010 by Uncategorized 2

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2 Responses

  1. danielclark says:
    June 18, 2010 at 4:46 pm

    Hirschorn makes some
    Hirschorn makes some interesting remarks about the ambiguity of the “free” concept. But his main point – that the web browser is lost in the dust as the giddy masses stampede to pay for smartphone apps – falls flat on its face. (See the article’s comments for substantiation.) After all, smartphones have browsers, which are much used. Apps have their place, but let’s keep things in perspective. The author has taken The Next New Thing and amplified it into The Only Thing. That makes for eye-catching journalism – apparently the editors of The Atlantic are hungry for snappy stuff – hey, there’s a lot of competition, particularly online (on browsers, by the way) – and it got printed. So I’d say the article says more about the state of ink-on-paper publishing than it does the state of the Internet. The traditionals are lusting after online paywalls to keep their standard business plans in place, and an article that tends to confirm the validity of that urge must have looked mighty attractive.

    Reply
  2. Anonymous says:
    June 20, 2010 at 11:05 pm

    Rubbish.
    I agree with danielclark.

    This article was biased, alarmist, and also misinformed about the nature of the technologies it discusses.

    Reply

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