This weekend, I thought a lot about my afflicted friends and family. I arrived at a place of acquiescence about it all, and within that space, I turned my eye to a positive future. As Life so often does, it presented me an opportunity to engage my mind in a positive future frame, and so I did. MIT magazine focused on a topic that has been “in the future” for some time, but now is making the move to the present.
In the early 1990s, I started an Internet company. At first, my company provided a way for folks to get online for chatting and such. But as the graphic user interface of the text-based Internet evolved into the World Wide Web, I turned the focus of my company toward marketing businesses on the “Web.” One thing led to another and soon I was publicly speaking all over the place about the future. Well, let me tell you how much incredulity I could see in the eyes of many business folks as I looked out over my audiences. People were thinking, “We will be able to do what, sell products online?” “Yes,” I told them, “and plenty more.” Okay, that day came, and then it all started flowing quite rapidly and quite overwhelmingly. You might not know this, but the Web has been going critical for some time now with the use of “apps” to download bandwidth-sucking content, such as TV programs, movies, music, etc. It would appear that those in positions of power are finally getting it together to fix it, and in that are some investment opportunities.
The last decade expanded what we could do online, but the Web’s basic programming couldn’t keep up. That threatened to fracture the world’s greatest innovation engine—until a small group of Web rivals joined forces to save it.
The solution, at least for now, is HTML5, a new language that will allow for a faster more efficient Internet, a more useable and practical structure, greater interactivity, streamlined multimedia transmissions, better security, the potential for data storage on a scale much larger than what we have today, and …
The central goal of HTML5 is to give websites the chance to expand beyond pages and into programs.
Get ready for startups and look to the big boys for innovation as the new Web comes to fruition. Specifically, look to the demise of the desktop platform and say hello to the “cloud.” The days of loading software are mercifully coming to an end.
“It’s finally possible for us to build applications on the Web that are not just imitations of desktop software,” says LucidChart founder Ben Dilts. “It’s now possible to build Web applications that are better than desktop software.”
Back then, I told folks, “When the computer acts like your telephone or TV, that will be the day we will have truly arrived.” Certainly, I meant content, but, and more importantly, I also meant that when you pick it up or turn it on, it simply works for everything you need – it just is. It appears this day is so much closer with HTML5.
Trade in the day; invest in your life …
