The Future is in the Past
The world creates new and exciting things every day. To fill our time we want fun distractions. Sometimes these distractions lead to amazing new discoveries and technologies that completely change the way society works. Smart phones, The Internet, and Facebook have brought the world closer together while creating fun things for us to play with. If any of these things were removed we would feel lost.
After using something, we become dependent on it. Even being told about something which we haven’t used can change our perspective. Louis CK jokes how people complain about things they’ve just discovered not working.
Once we’re given something we expect it to always work. We don’t appreciate what isn’t earned and we always want more. It’s an aspect of the human condition.
As society innovates we become dependent on the new technologies. We forget what was previously used to accomplish the same task. Eventually, the new system recycles the old idea. It’s similar to fashion, if your clothes aren’t in style, just wait, they’ll become trendy again. It seems technology works the same way.
Out with thew New, In With The Old
When the Internet began to see traction it demanded dynamic web pages. Consumers weren’t happy with the available information. They wanted pages which changed based on information they provided. They wanted web sites to work the way the applications on their computer did. This demand brought about the concept of the web application.
Once web applications were created, other verticals, demanded dynamic pages. Before the word blog existed, people were writing their thoughts in flat, unchanging, text files. These people would then put these thoughts on sites like Geocities, which just served static content. But, with the rise of new technologies and better browsers, bloggers demanded frameworks to help them share their ideas with the world. So Movable Type, TypePad, Wordpress, and Drupal were developed.
The bloggers demanded dynamic tools to create their content and entrepreneur’s delivered. However, just because something can be created doesn’t mean it should. It’s hard to identify bad ideas when they’re being demanded by paying customers.
These frameworks are still primarily used by professional bloggers but a change is occurring. A single question has arisen in many developer’s heads. Why are bloggers using heavy frameworks to serve static content? The majority of bloggers don’t need dynamic software in order to succeed.
Developers are creating tools allowing bloggers to remain light weight and focus on their content. The tools turn dynamic code into static files. Jekyll, which I use for this blog, does exactly that. The static content generated can be served cheaply from a content delivery network.
Bloggers never needed the ability to use dynamic code to generate great content. Allowing users to run their own application just to blog is crazy. It increases the time to get a blog up and running while increasing the chance of compromise if they don’t install updates to their blog. Patches that fix SQL injection, remote code execution, and cross-site scripting bugs are constantly released for these heavy frameworks.
This transition and return to old technologies isn’t just happening in software, but hardware too. Google noticed the trend of general consumers starting to use web applications rather than traditional native applications. In response, Google built an entire suite of tools to compete with traditional office products like Microsoft Word and Excel. Then decided they could sell Chrome notebooks, which only have a single application. A browser. With just a browser, consumers can now do (almost) everything a traditional desktop can do. But, there is a restriction. To use the device you have to have internet access.
This is the way computers used to work. Dummy terminals were used by clients to talk to a central server that managed everything. Chrome notebooks work the same way. We are going back to the ways of the past.
Getting There Faster
As humans we love trying new and shiny things. Early adopters are consumed with the need to try new things. The tastemakers determine what the rest of us will eventually use. But, those new things eventually move back to the old ways. It’s just packaged differently.
Along with the previous examples mention Instagram used an old idea that resonated with us. With Instagram, we use a brand new device to take pictures which look like they’ve been developed in 1970.
I’m fascinated with the idea of speeding up this process. We currently go from A to B to A’. Is there a way to get to A’ faster? Could we just go directly from A to A’ without the middle step?