Is the Web dead? Not quite

Wired Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson is back predicting the future, writing in the September issue that the wide-open Web we have all come to love (or at least like a whole lot) is actually in decline. There will still be an Internet, but apps, rather than browsers, will rule the roost. It's already happening, thanks to the iPhone platform that offers a different sensibility to accessing information and entertainment.

It's the world that consumers are increasingly choosing, not because they're rejecting the idea of the Web but because these dedicated platforms often just work better or fit better into their lives (the screen comes to them, they don't have to go to the screen). The fact that it's easier for companies to make money on these platforms only cements the trend. Producers and consumers agree: The Web is not the culmination of the digital revolution.

Make money? Kind of a curious take for a guy who two years ago wrote a book titled "Free," in which he posited that businesses might be better off giving things away than charging for them (I know, it didn't even make sense then). But back to Anderson, 2010:

This was all inevitable. It is the cycle of capitalism. The story of industrial revolutions, after all, is a story of battles over control. A technology is invented, it spreads, a thousand flowers bloom, and then someone finds a way to own it, locking out others. It happens every time. Take railroads. Uniform and open gauge standards helped the industry boom and created an explosion of competitors -- in 1920, there were 186 major railroads in the US. But eventually the strongest of them rolled up the others, and today there are just seven -- a regulated oligopoly.

Now, he writes, "it's the Web's turn to face the pressure for profits and the walled gardens that bring them." His expectations about apps are provocative, but not terribly convincing, not yet anyway. Nick Bilton at Bits notes the stupendous growth for every aspect of the Internet, including the Web.

Most of these apps and Web sites are so intertwined that it's difficult to know the difference. With the exception of downloadable games, most Web apps for news and services require pieces of the Web and Internet to function properly. So as more devices become connected to the Internet, whether they're built to access beautiful walled gardens, like mobile apps or TV-specific interfaces, they will continue to access the Web too, enabling each platform to grow concurrently.