App Land

I'm going to prognosticate. In fact, I'm predicting the imminent death of the internets. Well, not quite.

One needs neither wisdom nor courage to speculate that the web will be different in five years, in ways we can't imagine now. Change is a constant, in this game. The tricky bit is in guessing what the change will be.

Here's what I am smelling in the breeze. The increasing dominance of Mobile as a thing (fucking around on your phone, instead of on a computer) is leading increasing toward Apps and away from general web browsing. Don't let the bastards lie to you. An app is generally pretty much just a web browser that only goes to one web site. It's the holy fucking grail for web-based businesses. If they can just get you to download and use the App, now it's a gigantic goddamned problem to go to any other web sites. So, if my web site isn't utterly crappy and broken, and if I can get you to fire up my App, you're a whole bunch more likely to just stay put while I sell you to advertisers.

What's this mean?

Well, in theory it means less cross-fertilization in photographic style and method, perhaps?

Are we actually going to see anything other than the current complete homogeneity across the entire interwebs (inter-apps, whatever)? I dunno, it doesn't take very damn much cross-fertilization to create homogeneity. If you want grizzly bears that don't look pretty much like all the other grizzlies, you need to completely isolate them for quite a while. And then, zowie, white bears. WTF?!!!

There should be some more differentiation, at least. And perhaps even a little renewed enthusiasm, as people stop having it forced upon them quite so obviously that there are a billion Joes Just Like You out there.

I dunno. Cautiously optimistic. I don't see how this could be bad for photography.

Terrible for everything else? Oh, hell yeah. Definitely.