Monday, August 16, 2004
BBC NEWS | Technology | An internet to go, please
Bill Thompson bemoans the continuing need for technical know-how in order to solve problems involved in getting and staying online. I think he's right to argue for the need for internet devices to be more like kitchen appliances, in that we just switch them on and go, without needing to worry about whether our new toaster is compatible with the newest FastToast protocol. But making internet appliances this easy to use has been tried, and they just didn't catch on with consumers. I've wondering about why that might be the case, and I guess it comes back to the addage "Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it". Maybe it's possible to make things just too simple. We've seen TVs with built-in internet, and phones with built-in email... but they didn't really take-off in the way you'd expect if there was a desperate market need for these things. Or maybe they were just marketed badly, or maybe despite their apparent simplicity they actually weren't any easier to use. I don't have the answers, I'm just wondering, like Thompson, why it is that we haven't seen any real 'internet appliances'. I think companies have tried, and it's turned out that the rapidly changing face of internet computing means that any ready-to-go internet box is by design unable to cope with the upgrades and changing configurations needed to keep it up to date with modern internet developments. That makes me wonder if maybe the internet itself has become far too baroque, and the equipment required to read it has become far too specific. I guess it's probably a bit of a chicken and egg situation too: if everyone had internet TV boxes, the people who make the web pages would have to design accordingly. as it is, most of us have IE6, and so the pages are designed for this. Will the internet ever experience a 'back to basics' drive, or will we all just stop moaning as we drift off into retirement and our much more technically-minded offspring take over the PC?
Bill Thompson bemoans the continuing need for technical know-how in order to solve problems involved in getting and staying online. I think he's right to argue for the need for internet devices to be more like kitchen appliances, in that we just switch them on and go, without needing to worry about whether our new toaster is compatible with the newest FastToast protocol. But making internet appliances this easy to use has been tried, and they just didn't catch on with consumers. I've wondering about why that might be the case, and I guess it comes back to the addage "Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it". Maybe it's possible to make things just too simple. We've seen TVs with built-in internet, and phones with built-in email... but they didn't really take-off in the way you'd expect if there was a desperate market need for these things. Or maybe they were just marketed badly, or maybe despite their apparent simplicity they actually weren't any easier to use. I don't have the answers, I'm just wondering, like Thompson, why it is that we haven't seen any real 'internet appliances'. I think companies have tried, and it's turned out that the rapidly changing face of internet computing means that any ready-to-go internet box is by design unable to cope with the upgrades and changing configurations needed to keep it up to date with modern internet developments. That makes me wonder if maybe the internet itself has become far too baroque, and the equipment required to read it has become far too specific. I guess it's probably a bit of a chicken and egg situation too: if everyone had internet TV boxes, the people who make the web pages would have to design accordingly. as it is, most of us have IE6, and so the pages are designed for this. Will the internet ever experience a 'back to basics' drive, or will we all just stop moaning as we drift off into retirement and our much more technically-minded offspring take over the PC?
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(c) 2003-2005 Russell Beale
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