Thread by @davekarpf

May 04, Gary Wolf revisits one of @WIRED’s most famous missed predictions, 1997’s “Push,” which argues the web would soon be replaced by new push technologies.

(@chr1sa will revisit this once again in 2010’s “the Web is dead.”)

Let’s ponder for a moment. (1/x)
#wiredarchive

Wolf is focused on 04 on RSS feeds.

Anderson in 2010 on the rise of streaming video and other non-web services.

Anderson’s prediction holds up better than Wolf’s, but that’s the topic of a separate tweetstorm, I think.

I want to think a bit about non-adoption of tech.
(2/x)

RSS solves a real problem — too much interesting content on the web! — but it solves it in a way that requires ongoing attention and tending. It let’s you control your information diet, if you will.

(3/x)

Let’s think about the other solutions to this sorting problem, the ones that have fared better.

I think there are two big categories. Email lists and fancy algorithms.

We get push information in our inbox, and we let FB/Twitter/Google soft and customize for us. (4/x)

Email requires no technical literacy. It is older than the Web, and is the robust, cheap incumbent push option that all others must seek to replace. (Death-of-email stories will come later. Spoiler alert, it still isn’t dead.) (5/x)

The search and social algorithms, meanwhile, aren’t actually push technologies. (If you stay off Twitter for a day, you miss what happened on twitter that day.)

And they all spend massive $$$ optimizing got time-on-site or other metrics of engagement.

(6/x)

And THATs what I think has always been missing from the Push predictions:

Where is the money in it?!?

FB and Google can spend tons on optimization because they stand to make tons from your attention.

Email is already really cheap. Youre not going to lower that price point.

I think that may be the untold story of why seemingly-promising new technologies fail.

After the VC money dries up, tech startups either produce revenue, get acquired, or disappear. Today’s cutting edge becomes tomorrow’s also-ran if there’s no money in it.

But (...) (7/x)

The business model is never part of the original narrative. It’s either unclear or unsexy. And it’s usually proprietary anyway.

So we just always leave that central determinant out of the stories we tell about the unfolding future.

(Fin)
#wiredarchive