"Civilizing the Net"

Of late the media is abuzz with stories of “Net2.0”, which is a new-found term for the Second Internet revolution, post the dot-com crash. The internet companies are again beginning to hit dizzying valuations and are attracting VCs by the hordes. Certainly the focus is on the ‘true survivors’ of Net1.0 which was swept away back in 2001. These survivors are the hot favorites, for obvious reasons. What’s surprising is that, in addition to these ‘oldies’, the new entrants post the dot-com crash are also being viewed in favorable light with people running over each other to fund them.

I’m not going to talk about that here, as, if you pick up any magazine you’ll get an overdose of it. Instead I’ll focus on a trend that I’ve been observing - a slow, steady and radical change happening over the net and which, in my opinion bodes well for its future. This trend becomes apparent if we closely follow the development of the internet over the decades and particularly, in the last decade. When we do this back-tracing, an interesting parallel emerges, here I’m not referring to the clichéd comparison with the Industrial revolution of the 1800s, but to an interesting parallel with the dawn of Human Civilization on Earth!!

After the internet was taken from the grips of the US Defense Department and the Universities and it was opened to everyone, there was curiosity all around as to what it can do for the people. However, the internet then had islands of users and information, just like the islands of human civilizations spread out around the world, thousands of years ago, and which were basically cut off from each other.

Realizing the opportunity in connecting these ‘islands’ over the internet, net indices and listings like Gopher and FTP archive moved into action in a bid to help users locate these ‘primitive lost civilizations’ over the internet. This was just similar to the travelers of the yesteryears (like our famous Columbus, Vasco da gama et al) who laboriously went around the world, extensively mapping the planet and compiling information from their various journeys. This served as the sole link ‘connecting’ the varied civilizations.

What then followed in the WWW was Net1.0. Businesses moved online and internet commerce happened. The net was populated by email service providers, news sites, portals, B2B, B2C and a whole lot of porn sites. But the distinguishing characteristic of Net1.0 was that, internet was just used as a medium of communication, between people or between businesses. The people logged on and after their job was done, logged off. That was about it. This is similar to the earlier communication and world trade that happened between the countries, which was focused and restricted to moving goods from one part of the world to the other.

Now, since 2003, after Net2.0 was ushered in, this limiting characteristic has been breached. The internet has received greater credibility and people have started ‘civilizing’ the net and have begun literally ‘living’ in it. What this means is that, from the usage of internet to just communicate or transact business, people are forming ‘communities’ on the web, creating their personal space in the form of websites, blog-spaces and so on. The internet is truly beginning to be accepted (around the world, not just the US) and is becoming an integral part of our lives. Finally, if we were to identify the parallel to this from history, it would be the ‘true movement’ of people around the world, cross-migration, civilization of the world and the formation of ‘one globalized world’.

Thus, there is a marked migration of people onto the web, and its use is not restricted to the peripheral applications as it used to be earlier. One might argue that some of these advanced uses were in vogue even during the earlier wave, but then it was an exception rather than a rule. So, today people are civilizing the internet and making it a better, livable place. The good thing is that, this is an irreversible trend and the world wide web can only get more connected and personalized in the years to come. This also bodes well for business, as their campaigns online will begin to deliver better results than their expectations, and, going by this trend, it can only get better.