There's a storm coming

In The Begining

The web is undeniably the single most important communication tool of the 21st century, it was designed to use a simple markup script called HTML that was served over HTTP/S, any program capable of decoding this markup could render and output a pictorial representation of the page, in one fell swoop the swapping of information became cross platform and multi device.

Caught on the hop

The web caught many big players such as Microsoft and IBM completely by surprise these mega corporations of the Information Technology world struggled to see why anyone would want to swap their copy of Office 95 or Lotus Notes with a poorly rendered feature incomplete mess that was HTML and at that time in 1995 that's what it was, but what the giants of computing failed to understand was the fact that because the source code could be studied, copied, improved and republished, unlike a word document the cost of entry to the web was essentially low or free. No longer did some clever hacker have to reverse engineer the document format in order to remain compatible as all the changes were in plain sight.

Terrified!

Microsoft responded to kill the web by attempting to control it as an open format means anyone who can code could write a parser for the web and compete on an even keel with them, most dominant companies would respond in this way. For large companies control of a technology means you can dictate platforms, standards and ultimately the price of accessing a technology, the web made this impossible to do so it had to die.

Fast Forward to 2010

The web is now a secure and well defined technology with most of the major players conforming to standards and the search giant google forcing through new innovation in the API's available it seems the web is to be an unstoppable force..... but wait!

The Rise Of The App

The release of the iPhone and iPad brought a new idea...... The App Store, a convenient place to get programs designed to lever the most out of your new shiny geek toy, and place money in to the pocket of the App Store operator (Not that this is a bad thing. Everyone needs to earn a living). Before the rise of the App you could view any content on the internet with just a webbrowser, bbc.co.uk, cnn.com, techcrunch.com all webbrowser, but now each site could have an "app" all with different interfaces, ways of working and more importantly a way of charging should the need arise.

The app brought another restriction, the loss of the ability to view the code, the sharing of the way it worked all locked down and controlled for the few developers who paid for the development kit, each developer learning from scratch, not being able to freely examine each others work for best practice. The App non-cross platform making it harder to port software to other machines, after all it's not in the App Store provider's interest to allow you to port to competing platforms, The App store where the operator gets to decide what goes on it, and can remove things at a whim *cough* google maps *cough*.

The Web is Open Source

I believe the web is the new open source / open research / scientific method way of working, the web encourages sharing, conformance to standards and is inclusive to hardware platforms, it is my belief we should make the web and its supporting technologies the bedrock of our future education and govermental systems, as it is this digital inclusion, this technology, that empowers users rather than companies.