The Future of the Web
I’ve been recently pondering what types of web technologies we’re going to see emerging in the next 5 or 10 years. Over the last 5 years the trend has been toward data, multimedia, interactivity, and community. Every week there’s some a few new startup websites/web applications. Every month there’s maybe one or two that is actually a progressive idea, but very few companies are developing new technologies.
PHP 4 is being dropped at the end of the year, replaced by PHP 5, if it hasn’t pretty much been already, ASP.NET 3.5 is due out sometime in January, and companies like Microsoft are inventing new technologies like Silverlight (albeit a Flash competitor, it has its differences). We are also starting to see a blurring of the lines between what is a website and what is a traditional application. Web apps are behaving more like the traditional and vice versa. An excellent example is Adobe AIR, which allows developers with web programming skills to code for the desktop. 20 or 30 years from now we may be using an operating system that had no difference in terms of interactivity between the web and the desktop. The web could become integrated with the user’s own personal computer. I will be able to copy large files off the internet as if they were on my local hard drive. I would love to see a company develop in this direction.
All this technology is pushing. Pushing what, though? Well, certainly the limits of hardware technology. With rumors abound about companies like Comcast limiting customer bandwidth, is the very infrastructure of the web going to be able to withstand the explosion of tech around the corner? Of course it will, it just might take time.
So here we go! Developers keep demanding! Companies keep innovating! Future Ahoy!