As the World Wide Web turns 18, Wired declares it dead—even as the Internet continues to rule. Chris Anderson takes us through a typical user's day: email checked and Facebook browsed on an iPad; podcasts and Pandora listened to; Skype and IM conversations held. "You’ve spent the day on the Internet—but not on the Web," he writes, and it's because we now want closed platforms, like apps, that "work better or fit better" in our lives. "For the sake of the optimized experience on mobile devices, users forgo the general-purpose browser. Fast beats flexible."
In a complementary article, Newser's own Michael Wolff writes that these days, content is king, driven by "businesspeople more inclined to think in the all-or-nothing terms of traditional media" who are overtaking those who subscribe to the "come-one-come-all collectivist utopianism of the Web," he writes. "Since the dawn of the commercial Web, technology has eclipsed content. The new business model is to try to let the content—the product, as it were—eclipse the technology." Citing a rising tide of thrilling streaming services like Spotify and Netflix, he concludes, "We are returning to a world that already exists—one in which we chase the transformative effects of music and film instead of our brief (relatively speaking) flirtation with the transformative effects of the Web." Click here to read the full articles.
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