Welcome to Web 3.0

Faster, Richer, and Omnipresent, the Internet is an Integral Part of Life; Now We Have to Pay for It.

The internet is roughly ten years old. Lot's of nerdy folks will argue that the internet has been around many more years than that, and email and local area computer networks existed long before that on college campuses. But the main stream internet we think of today is about ten years old. An eighteen to twenty-four month window a little more than a decade ago brought the launch of Amazon, eBay, and Yahoo. The New York Times has been on the internet since the same period. During this time, the internet transmission from research tool to modern living room convenience as most service providers switched to a flat rate monthly fee system, including America Online's conversion in 1996, from an hourly fee system.

Sometime around 2001, the internet era came to a screeching halt. Or at least, the dotcom frenzy did when the market crashed. Web services that had been hemorrhaging money were no longer worth operating. The "second" generation of the internet was labeled Web 2.0 by OReilly who then subsequently held conferences to discuss what made the new, modern web fundamentally different from the early days. More recently, Web 2.0 was in the news again as competitors of OReily's trademark were sued. As bloggers condemn OReily for their "abuse" of trademarks, let's consider that, in part, the whole lawsuit is in why Web 2.0 is now irrelevant.

Web 3.0 is perhaps just the next step in the evolutionary process of the internet, yet for better or for worse, these changes making the internet more expensive.

Paying for Content

OReily's first example of Web 1.0 vs. 2.0 is the difference between DoubleClick, the ad software notorious for popups and spyware, and Google's Adsense, the benign text ads that quietly wait for a reader to click. But text ads, served by Google or yahoo and now even Microsoft are slowly losing credibility with advertisers as click fraud becomes an evident problem. Advertisers as a result are paying less for ads.

In addition, the maturing internet audience is now keen on ads, dubious or genuine. The shock value of the world's first Banner Ad was a brilliant marketing ploy. How many thousands of users clicked on it? Yet, so ubiquitous are ads today that users are much more able to zone out all the ads. The result is one of two things; the much more aggressive Flash ad that engulfs the webpage (though you can avoid this by not installing the most up to date version of Flash Player), though these too will lose their shock value, or the alternative result, paying for content.

A millennia ago in internet years, content was free for the taking. Some content providers required "registration," which usually meant forking over an email address that would eventually be spammed, but the content was free. The content of course was paid for through internet ads, largely based on DoubleClick software or similar products from competitors. That's web 1.0 according to OReily.

Google News was launched in 2002. Google news is an aggregated search engine of various news websites. The service allows access to many more news websites than an ordinary person might read on any given day. The net effect of this is the devaluation of news. Why pay for a copy of a news story from one online paper when another, similar article is freely available from another online paper.

Meanwhile, the rise of the blog produced millions, hundreds of millions, or even billions of pages of "fresh" content for the web. Blogging software eliminates many of the technical hurdles associated with operating a webpage. Suddenly the whole world was a content creator. Obviously, this further devalued web content by providing so much more of it. Even if most or almost all of blogs are useless, banal pieces of information, the universe of blog pages is so vast that even a small percentage of valuable information is a lot of content.

Finally, the rise of Wikis, or group edited webpages, has meant that the accuracy of information has improved on the internet. Now, "accurate" does not necessarily mean Britanica.com and "truthful" does not mean a .gov url. Wikipedia has become an invaluable resource (perhaps too valuable, considering the number of instances 'professional' reporters have been caught citing whole passages without giving credit to the source). Again, Wikipedia is devaluing products like Britannica's online subscription by making content so cheap its impossible to charge for it.

That's Web 2.0 according to OReily.

Yet despite all odds, a few months ago, the New York Times launched Time's Select, a subscription service that allows access to "premium" content like Op Ed pieces. Essentially, the Times is saying their Op Ed pieces are more valuable than the opinions bloggers offer for free. CNN also offers premium content in the form of restricting access to certain video feeds over the internet. Or consider Fark.com. Developed during "Web 1.0" as a place to amass links for friends of founder Drew Curtis, it evolved during the "Web 2.0" phase as a community site allowing users to leave comments and feedback. Since then the site has been commercialized with a "premium content" section known as Total Fark where users pay a fee.


"Premium content," is here. But how many subscription fees can users afford to pay? Web 3.0 is poised to find out.

Multi-tiered Internet

Another recent occurrence has been the idea of "Net Neutrality." The last decade of internet service has been served up under the principle that internet service providers could not effect the flow of data from a content provider to a user. But now, network owners--those sleazy folks that provide unlimited high speed broadband access to your home--have decided that they can make even more money charging not just their users, but content providers.

Widely adapted broadband internet promised faster download speeds for content rich websites. Those flash animation ads are made possible largely because high speed internet allows them to load quickly. Videos, music, audio commentary--these are all content sources that rely on broadband speed connections. Yet now that broadband access is piped into homes and businesses across the country, the service providers, looking to earn even larger profits, would like to extort content providers for fees as well. In essence, websites that serve up videos and that consume large amounts of bandwidth will either pay huge fees to individual service providers or their content will be "throttled" to a slower network speeds.

End users will end up paying for this. Either they will pay service providers higher fees for unthrottled internet access, or content providers will pay the extortion fees and make up the difference by charging more for the content they serve. Additionally, this will return power from the hands of individual net users to big corporations. "Average Joe" content providers will be forced into the slow lane of the internet. This gives large corporations an advantage in that by paying off service providers, their content will be sent to users at a faster rate than "average Joe" websites, including video and audio blogs. The immediate result will be a reduction in content, and therefore the value of content will rise.

Take for example the Time Warner company. Time Warner is a huge owner of media content including movies, music, television, websites and magazines. But Time Warner is also a internet service provider through their retail cable divisions and through AOL for Broadband internet service. Time Warner could easily leverage its market share of content AND internet hosting; users of Time Warner cable could get "fast" service of Time Warner content, while other content providers would be forced into the slow lane. As media companies continue to form ever larger conglomerates, scenarios like this become ever more likely.

Taxes

During the wild West days of the early internet, lawmakers had decided levying a tax on internet service would hinder the development of the infantile network. Well the internet has matured. As early as last year, members of Congress began suggesting it was time for an internet tax similar to other telecommunications taxes. So far the net is still tax free, but how long remains a mystery. A recession in the start of the new millennium had nearly bankrupted many state treasury accounts. Internet taxes were just one of many suggestions state government made to try and fill the gaps in their budgets. Luckily, for the most part, state budgets have rebounded considerably. But the next economic downturn may very well bring with it "innovative" state levied internet taxes.

Straight up taxing internet service is not the only place greedy government accountants have turned in recent years. State sales taxes were largely circumnavigated by internet retailers. Essentially, out of state customers never paid retail sales tax. As lawmakers grew keen to the practice--and more importantly saw sales tax revenue drop as more people converted to online shopping--state governments began closing loopholes. At present, dotcom retailers with any physical presence in a state must then pay sales tax on sales within that state. As online retailers have expanded, so have their operations in multiple states. In part this makes business sense by reducing shipping times to customers, but it also means fewer customers are enjoying a tax free savings.

The next step of state sales taxes is forming sales tax pacts with other states. In essence, several states agree to collect a common sales tax on items either originating from or shipped to their states. This extends the collective "physical presence" of online stores to many more business operations.

Finally, states are also beginning to wise up to the fact that digital goods can be taxed as well. Digital download sales of software or music or any other non physical good has quietly slipped under the sales tax radar. Not any longer. Many states have or are considering legislation to tax digital downloads. Virtual sales taxes have real effects on the cost of goods.

Service Software

ZDNet declared in November of last year that the Web 3.0 would include "Application Services." The era of stand alone software is slowly coming to an end. The future of course, is online software applications that replace products like MS-Office. Users would pay a monthly fee that would allow them to access the software and user files from anywhere with an internet connection.

In theory, this brave new world of web applications seems like a brilliant idea for the consumer. They never again have to worry about backing up their hard drive, because the web service would. They would have access to their files from any computer, not just their primary PC. And, yes, it would seem this would solve the problem of acquiring software licenses for a business computer, home computer and secondary home computer.

But the reality is, a service based software system gives more control to the software developer. There would be no pirated versions of MS-Office floating around, and today there are hundreds of thousands of unauthorized copies. Software pirates are not just in remote places like China or Russia. Microsoft has made the price of a legitimate copy of off the shelf Office so high, that the risks associated with pirating the software far outweigh the risk. Service applications however, would always be paid for because the software would run through the vender's servers where it could be verified as authentic.

Meanwhile, service applications are rented, not owned. Take for instance the Word 97 we received with our first Windows 95 machine. Part of the software bundle, the cost of the software was included in the price of the computer, i.e. "free". As we've disposed of subsequent computers, Word 97 has migrated with us (don't worry Microsoft, we've only ever installed it on one computer at a time as our older machines went defunct). Imagine instead though, that for the last nine years we were paying a nominal service fee of $10 a month for that software; instead of being "free," the cost of the software jumps to $1080.

Internet service applications may sound phenomenal at first, but really they are just another way for software corporations to squeeze even more money from consumers adding to the cost of Web 3.0.

Big Business Web

Another feature of the new internet is that Big Business is taking over. In part this will be accelerated by "web throttling" where only big business will be able to pay for bandwidth access. But its also a change in the way content is developed.

Consider for instance, flash animation websites. Flash animation has become the new standard of "professional" websites. But the software to create a flash website costs hundreds of dollars. Websites that are hand coded using a basic text editor available on every computer in America are slowly being obsolesced. The result essentially is that instead of the cost of building a website being relatively low, the minimum cost is going up.

The cost of computer hardware has come down dramatically allowing every jack ass with an internet connection to set up a website. Yet add to that a tax on hosting services, extortion payments to internet service providers, and higher fees on development software and the new, adjusted cost for operating a website skyrockets. The end result is fewer websites, less content and higher prices for everyone.

If Web 2.0 was blogging, Web 3.0 is professional bloggers. Media companies like Gawker Media and Curbed.com are built on blogs, the modern newspaper. These blog networks command higher ad prices because they receive more visitors. As a result, they are raising the cost of entering the internet media market. Ironically, Gawker's roots are in mocking the "closed society" of traditional, big business print media.

Saying Goodbye to the PC, Hello to the Fee

The internet has been for years synonymous with personal computers. Yet technology has evolved now that the internet is also available on mobile computers, cellular phones, and other devices that are not the person computer like the Microsoft xBox. Both the xBox 360 and as yet released Playstation 3 have a "premium" online component that again charges users a subscription fee. These fees are in addition to the cost of an initial game and the cost of internet access. Sure, online networking of game systems is a great leap forward in computer gaming, but at a price.

Then there are the palm pilots and blackberry systems that use wireless technology to serve the internet to mobile users. Wireless companies love these devices because they extract higher fees from a market saturated with cellular phones. There is very little room for the industry to sell more phones, but plenty of room to sell additional services like wireless internet. The key point here is that all these services add new fees to the wireless bill of customers.

And Beyond

The internet fever of the 1990's was replaced by somber optimism of the next generation internet. Yet here we are again at another crossroads. The freedom of the internet is being replaced with the fees of the internet. Once upon a time, the internet was the great leveling device allowing the common man the same privileges and opportunities of corporate America. The internet was a soap box that anyone could stand on.

The era of Web 3.0 is upon us. No longer is the soap box free to proselytize from. The same obstacles facing innovative small businesses and independent voices in older mediums are coming to the net. Greater restriction, tighter regulation, and higher costs are culminating to form private enclaves, elitism, and corporate society that the net promised to eliminate.

Yet, the internet is not beyond saving. Perhaps, the next generation of the web will reverse the trends we are now seeing. Free wifi networks as large as cities are under construction. Google is implementing free a Wifi service in San Francisco, that if successful could be extended elsewhere. Service providers like Verizon and Bellsouth have powerful lobbyists who so have so far been successful at ending “net neutrality.” But content servers like Google and Amazon and Microsoft have equally deep pockets working to keep the whole of the net in the fast lane. Perhaps a decade from now, we will remember Web 3.0 as the dark ages, that perhaps a new renaissance of the internet will be as compelling and inexpensive as the network we leave behind.

"Sex" and Unintended Consequences

Why Blindly Censoring the Internet Is a Bad Idea

The surprise we enjoyed this morning was a sudden blockage of certain web URL's by a newly installed firewall. Gmail, Hotmail, and any other website with a "Mail" in the URL was suddenly being blocked. Obviously, the blockage of "mail" was a bad idea, as anyone on the office network would not be able to access email addresses often used for daily business. Besides, mail is a fairly benign URL.

Our first reaction when the message "URLs or Pages Blocked" was to google news Gmail in to find out if the server was down. It is after all a Beta program, and we've grown accustomed to the occasional glitch. Of course, because google returns the search term in the URL, the search results were also blocked. We were a bit confused until we tried hotmail and yahoo mail. After those sites returned the same message, we realized in fact "mail" was being blocked on our end.

Perhaps not surprisingly, "Sex" was also blocked. Of course, the censorship was being done rather blindly. Websites with the word sex in the text were allowed to pass through, only those with sex in the URL were being blocked. For those of you suffering from Puritanical morals, keep in mind where "sex" appears. Middlesex, Essex, and Sussex are all counties in New Jersey. Inadvertantly, the official county webpages were suddenly blocked.

While all this was quickly remedied by removing the blocking software, the conundrum illustrates not only the difficulties of censoring the internet, but also the unintended consequences. Imagine instead the same software operating on a small business network, but rather installed on a large scale government network with many levels of bureaucracy. How long would government workers be barred from viewing the official Middlesex county webpage in a vain effort to thwart office pornography?

Is It Time for a Virtual CDC?

Stopping Today's Security Threats Has Proven Too Much for Corporate America

Today, digital viruses are as great a threat as their real world counterparts. Sensitive information ranging from personal credit data, bank accounts, medical records and more are stored on computers running some flavor of Microsoft's operating system. Yet Microsoft waits weeks to acknowledge a flaw in the software, and still longer to fix the holes.

If the real Center for Disease Control was run by Microsoft, an Avian flu pandemic would have wiped out most of North America long before Microsoft even acknowledged the existence of a virus.

There are few reasons for Microsoft to bother fixing security holes with the expediancy necessary to prevent damage on a large scale. For one thing, its in the interest of Microsoft's public relations to ignore potential security flaws. While at this point, few people probably trust MS software to be flaw free, every public announcement of a security flaw detracts from the image of the company.

Second, having a full time team of digital "doctors" on call to respond to threats immediately costs alot of money. Microsoft obviously is not short on cash, but from a business stand point, the company has little interest in developing software that ultimately is being distributed for free.

That brings up another point. Microsoft has been making inroads into the rather lucrative anti-virus, anti-spyware software business arena. The latest version of Windows has inspired anti-virus maker Symantic to even file suit against the company for allegedly infringing on Symantic software patents. Once Microsoft is able to profit from preventing virus infections, expect "security holes" to exist for even longer because the company will have a financial incentive to sell propietary anti-virus software.

Yet another reason not to entrust Microsoft to patch security holes is the company's recent anti-piracy measures. Of the millions of computers running windows worldwide, a good number of them are running cracked copies of windows. Now though, for customers to gain access to security patches, users must also download an anti-piracy spyware program developed by Microsoft. Has the end result been for millions of illegal copies of Windows to suddenly be paid for? No, indeed, the real result is there are now millions of computers without the latest patches and are hence millions of computers vulnerable to infection.

Law and order types might declare that users running pirated copies of windows will get what they deserve if they become infected with a computer virus because they fialed to download new security protocols. But guess what, its not a problem confined to their machines. On the global network of computers, every user effects every other user.

Perhaps, for instance, you are a user of a legitimate copy of windows and have all the proper security fixes. Indeed, perhaps even you are smart enough or lucky enough never to have been a victim of a virus or a phishing scam. But what about your bank, your doctor's office, or your credit agency? You're information is only as secure as their computer systems. And of course, many of todays' viruses only need to infect a small number of computers connected to the internet before they act as mindless spam robots or launch a denial of service attack on your favorite website. Indeed, computer security is only as strong as the weakest link, and now, thanks to Microsoft anti-piracy spyware, the weakest link is every computer not running a legitimate copy of windows.

Loyal Mac users will probably point to one or all of these reasons as why they prefer their little Apple computers. But don't be so smug. The last few months have brought a number of Mac based viruses, and if Apple computer ever makes a comeback in the personal computing market, expect even more. Just look to the success and failure of the Firefox browser.

The Firefox browser is an open source internet browser developed as an alternative to the flawed Internet Explorer developd by Microsoft. At first, Firefox was a safe alternative to explorer. Explorer had a number of security holes that easily allowed dubious websites to install malicious software on users who simply browsed their pages or clicked on links sent to their email. Yet, as Firefox grew in popularity, so did threats to the integrity of the software. Today, Firefox users should not assume they are immune to various infections just because they are using an alternative browser. Likewise, Mac users should be worried too.

Just as Microsoft hesitates to admit security flaws, Apple would also like to pretend that everything is okay in the Garden of Eden. Apple's television ads plain out deny the Mac OS vulnerability to viruses, yet these viruses do exist.

So yes, it is time for a virtual CDC. A virtual CDC would work with Microsoft and Apple (and any other vender of Operating Systems) to patch flaws in the operating software. This would remove the burden from these companies to develop software patches that ultimately are given away for free.

In turn, the Virtual CDC would be able to react more quickly than MS or Apple to threats. The Virtual CDC would post warnings more quickly because there would be no fear of a drop in the price of stock. The agency would be a government facility: properly crafted legislation creating the virtual CDC would also compel the companies to share the source code of their operating systems, but without fear of a competitor running off with the companies' trade secrets.

Microsoft, and to some extent Apple, has proven time and time again that their operations are incapable of dealing with security holes in an appropriate and timely fashion. The threats posed to the operating systems that run the world's computers and the data stored on those computers offer a clear and present danger to the United States. Now is the time to take action, not after a virus infects a critical government computer that launches a nuclear strike.

Babies as Accessories

What Happens When The Babies Go Out of Style? And Why Haven't They Already?

Suddenly its hip to be a parent. Maybe it was when Miranda on Sex and the City made it cool to be a Mom. Maybe the influx of urban babies is the result of folks finally understanding how suffocating raising children in the suburbs really can be. Maybe it was the rush of celebrity babies from Madonna to Britney. In either case, children are the latest fashion craze.

For instance, the once gritty neighborhoods of Chelsea have been overrun by strollers to the point where the gay community has taken to fleeing to parts of Harlem [Note to self: buy real estate in Harlem now]. Meanwhile, children have been causing a raucous wherever they go. The New York Times points to a bakery in Chicago where the owner was forced to put up a sign essentially warning children to shut the fuck up or get out. And some parents did.

It never seems to occur the new generation of urban parents that perhaps they should leave their children at home. Far too often, parents are under the impression that their child's shit doesn't stink, and that nobody minds that their child is wailing louder than the Sirens. Perhaps this is a response from the "me" centered generation that grew up in the 1980's. Unlike past generations of parents, today's young mom and dads never realized that having a child meant given up some of those simple pleasures-- like going out to eat or having the freedom to spend three hours shopping for a pair of new shoes.

Instead, parents are toting around their little poop machines and everyone else is expected to laugh and giggle at every adorable thing that comes spewing from the child's mouth.

The new generation of young parents are so self obsessed it is hard to imagine they decided to be parents for the right reasons. More likely, the new generation wanted to be parents not for the pure joy of child rearing, nor out of accidental conception, but because all their friends were doing it. Peer pressure has produced the next generation of American's brats.

But what exactly is going to happen to all these little tots when suddenly Mommy doesn't think it is so cute that her new blouse was ruined by sticky, candy covered fingers? Unlike a purse, or a pair of shoes, or a video game, when babies go out of style, they can't just be tossed into the nearest landfill [though be sure, someone will no doubt try that].

By the time today's toddlers hit their teen years, no doubt their parent's will have lost interest. And suddenly the children that were once dragged to every wine and cheese party and club opening their mothers' attended will be abandoned to discover the world on their own. Coke habit anyone?

Generations of the past have sacrificed and saved for their children. The great American dream, after all, is for each successive generation to be better off than the previous. Yet, today’s urban mommies are more focused on designer baby accessories than raising their children. Prada diapers would surely be a hot seller.

But the new generation has given up. Their money is for them, not their children. The luxury items they are buying are toys for themselves, not their infants. Indeed, the infants themselves are the toys of the young urban parent.

Perhaps though these toddlers will turn out okay. Maybe, abandoned by parents seeking personal gratification, the new generation will become self reliant. Perhaps even the counter culture of the next generation will embrace solid families and parenting. Perhaps, just maybe, they will understand the value of a babysitter.