The evolution of the internet | Fernando Tarnogol

I was reading the article Game Web 2.Over? published on meish.org. It was about what’s currently going on with the social web. And it made me think. We are currently in the epilogue of web 2.0 and maybe starting to read the prologue of 3.0.

But this is not another post about what’s coming, or how’s it gonna be. It’s about the life cycle of things. In this case, the internet; or at least a big part of it.

Here’s a roadmap of the article, just in case you feel like diving into it:

The internet evolves
How global web trends arise
How these trends behave
How is the current “paradigm” going to shift
What to expect after web 2.0 is gone

It would be foolish at this point to consider internet a living organism, even though it shares some of their characteristics. These are not intrinsic to the internet, it’s simply because it is operated by sentient beings, us. And as we find new uses for the internet and we learn to exploit them, we create new architectures and topologies. The internet now is nothing like the internet from 15 years ago. It has changed substantially in shape, purpose and form. And it will keep changing, at least as long as we are in charge of it.

Given the immediacy and penetration of the internet, a good idea gets virally distributed around the globe. Shortly, new startups emerge “inspired” by that idea and before you notice, a trend has been created. Hundreds of new companies start to pop up, cash starts flowing in the direction of that trend, and it becomes mainstream. The media goes crazy, the people jump on the train as if someone was giving out free t-shirts. So, what’s the logic behind all this?

We can use the analogy with paradigms (and their phases) to understand the evolution of the internet. Right now, the market got saturated and the bubble has blown up. There’s no space in the ecosystem for so many services and people are not willing to commit to every single one of them. Only the strongest survive.

But apart from that, new technologies have arisen and new uses for the internet have been found. A new niche has been created, and so, a new trend will fade in. This doesn’t mean that web 2.0 will disappear into oblivion. Au contraire, “traits” from web 2.0 will survive in the new model/paradigm of the web. Just like in the natural world, the internet evolves following the same logic.

If the first internet paradigm was about one-way flow of information and read-only; and 2.0 incorporated the social and collaborative elements, then 3.0 or whatever it is called, will definitely conserve these (trends that became) traits.

As soon as I finished writing the post, I went back through it and realized that it went in an unexpected direction. I didn’t think that my conclusions would lead me such in an evolutionary line of thought. I tried to avoid it but every road led me there. I’ve read some articles that have started to wonder if a consciousness could emerge from the complexity of the internet, or if the internet behaves as an organism. I still believe that if those characteristics emerge from the internet, it’s because there’s a human mind behind every terminal. I can’t say it’s not going to happen, but certainly it’s not happening now.