The PC and Net Are Dead

Let me define the terms here. PC refers in this context to the consumer devices not related to employment. That’s the home computer you buy for kids’ games, email, surfing, etc. Even if you use it for banking and taxes, as long as it’s not essential for a job, it is the subject of the following speculation. Net refers similarly to the consumer experience Internet, largely what’s called “Net 2.0” these days. All the stuff most people do when at the keyboard of a home computer, or perhaps at the library, or school, whatever. There is some overlap because the majority of those who do the consumer version of the Net also have a commodity home PC for such use.

Perhaps the title makes more sense now. Most people realize today’s kids find the PC and Net 2.0 already “old school.” They have texting, cellphone chatter, plus all the other uses from fancy extra features on their handheld devices. Aside from school assignments, and some selected downloading and viewing of entertainment, they could easily live without seeing another PC. All the more so as iPhone and its competitors drop in price, and “full data packages” become more mainstream and affordable.

The Internet itself isn’t going anywhere. It will become ever more essential, but how it is accessed and used will very quickly evolve to something we serious Net geeks will not recognize. While the netbooks will continue to sell well, those will be for serious geeks, those who perceive a requirement to maintain some form of traditional Net use. Fewer and fewer such devices will have significant installed package counts, as the browser will become the single portal to everything else. Office suites will be a matter of cloud computing, if they are used at all.

In other words, the mere use of a computing device will fall under the increasing control of providers. Software you install will thin down greatly, and more development will turn to server-side. The entire modern world will be one mass of dumb terminals — cellphones, game consoles, netbooks, music players, HD TV — all provided through the Net. All you need is an access device based on your purpose for connecting, and the most versatile will be the handheld phone-GPS-palmtop whatever.

That means all this struggle to make Linux mainstream for the consumer desktop will be wasted effort. I’ve already noted elsewhere we are past the pinnacle of PC software achievements. KDE and GNOME will have to concentrate on embedded devices or find themselves suddenly without a fan base. The next generation of Linux users will hardly know it’s Linux, much less will they be aware of KDE versus GNOME. It will be as obscure and specialized as the debate between SysV versus BSD init today. Not gone, just not part of the mainstream conversation.

The only question is how soon, because the current economic malaise is unpredictable. It’s possible we could fall back almost to the Stone Age if it really comes apart. I find it more likely we’ll be distressed, lots of companies will die, be devoured by others, and the big players’ names and logos will fluctuate. Fundamentals won’t change. Consumers will be less able to pay, but still demand services. The providers who can meet the market will grow. I expect that market to demand more convenience services in more places, and technology will continue to make it cheaper. Already users are demanding full data packages with a flat rate, with uninterrupted access across borders.

These demands will grow, and you can guess it will be the key to breaking down national barriers in business and banking, and thus government. People will demand a more global atmosphere, even as they draw down their circle of associations to those of their own narrow social group. We’ll see a fragmentation of tribal identity over things we would hardly consider a genuine dividing line today. Governments and businesses (already hardly separate entities any more) prosper most when society is fragmented, and when people are dependent. Those two features go hand-in-hand. Folks who don’t have to learn how to deal with a wide range of humanity are far more insular, hanging only with their own kind. But the “own kind” will tend to be a shifting focus from year to year, so that lifelong relationships will become increasingly rare. People who enjoy a wide experience of humanity can form powerful bonds, bonds which make them interdependent, but completely independent of government which is outside their community.

So the genuine sense of community is the biggest threat to money and power. It makes people independent. Count on marketing and propaganda to promote fickle fashion in building and breaking apart transient “in groups” to keep folks from forming communities. It won’t take much reading to find this is a conscious concern among The Powers That Be (TPTB). It won’t matter what goals of TPTB may express, a teeming mass of disconnected humanity, with ever-shifting associations and interests is the best way to get there.

The PC and Net, as defined above, were the entry point to making this happen. When that mechanism became the primary means to underground community, with free-wheeling and chaotic information passing, it was marked for death by TPTB. It’s not hard to see how marketing has virtually destroyed the pure vision of what could have been. By some counts, spam is 90%+ of all Net traffic, and 99% of all email traffic. That protocol would be dead were there not such feverish activity in blocking technology, and efforts to reduce the number of zombies used to send all that spam. Sites laden with advertising have reduced content, which in some places approaches zero. The only thing keeping such sites alive is reduced expectations for content, and the increasing inability of the current generation to process very much content.

I suspect the geek’s Internet will still survive in some form, but highly marginalized compared to what it is now. The zenith is already passed. Today’s broadband Net access will be like yesterday’s BBS. People who can and will use current methods will become an ever-shrinking pool. The bandwidth will be consumed by background traffic from all those Net-enabled refrigerators, toasters, washers and dryers, and business-government data transfers, and entertainment delivery. PCs will become a tiny minority of devices connected to the Net. The demand for a different set of protocols is already there. Just when we are poised to make Linux/BSD king of the desktop PC userland, nobody is there in userland any more.