The E-Business Software Weekly is a series profiling trends and developments in software and applications that support e-business, the Internet, and other electronic communication channels. Look for a new story each week in this space.
X Marks the Spot
If you want to know where the Internet may be headed, just ask Michael Crichton. The author and filmmaker presents in his book and film "Disclosure" one of the most vivid examples yet of the potential of digital interaction. In the film version of the story, the lead character, played by Michael Douglas, dons a virtual reality helmet to enter a synthetic world called "The Corridor" that brings sterile data files to life in the form of an ornate, physically realistic library. In The Corridor, rather than scanning through indecipherable file names, as on mundane personal computers, the Douglas character is able to search among familiar virtual representations of file cabinets and documents as if he were physically present among them.
Unfortunately, Douglas' antagonist in the film, played by Demi Moore, is seeking the same files, with the intent of destroying them. As Douglas desperately hunts for the documents that would exculpate him from the crimes of which Moore has accused him, he sees her enter The Corridor, her steely eyes probing for this unwanted intruder. At last, Douglas finds the files. But the relief of discovery is fleeting: the documents begin literally vanishing in his virtual hands, as Moore, working from her own computer, begins furiously tapping the delete key. Out of options, Douglas escapes The Corridor with seconds to spare before Moore's nefarious associates can delete him as well.
Enter the X Internet
Analysts at Forrester Research, the Massachusetts-based Internet research company, were nearly as bold as Crichton (if not quite so cinematically vivid) a few weeks ago when they dipped their toes in their own virtual world of prognostication, proclaiming that the ordinary Internet was dead and announcing that it would be replaced, over the next few years, by a new entity they christened "the X Internet." Calling today's Internet "dumb, boring, and isolated," Forrester research director Carl Howe and his colleagues predicted that the modern World Wide Web of static text pages and lame animations would soon be supplanted by a richer, more interactive Internet so different from what exists today that it required a completely new name.
Forrester forecast that the transformation to the "X Internet" would take place in two primary stages. First would be the development of "the eXecutable Internet," an evolution of today's document-centric Internet into a Net that relies primarily on small executable software packages that deliver spot functionality to users' desktops on an as-needed basis. Forrester's Howe illustrates this concept with the example of a music group that wants to distribute songs over the Web. Rather than having to create multiple versions of the song file for all possible audio players, the group would simply produce a small executable file that would simultaneously deliver both the song and a compact, universal audio player to the user's computer. With such executable files, Howe tells the online NewsFactor Network, you could distribute a wide variety of rich file types in the same way.
Beyond this evolutionary "eXecutable Internet," says Forrester, lies the more revolutionary "eXtended Internet," the ubiquitous Internet that techno-visionaries ranging from MIT's Nicholas Negroponte to Internet inventor Tim Berners-Lee to Microsoft's Bill Gates have long foreseen. The eXtended Internet will begin achieving prevalence by 2005, says Howe, and will reach full bloom by 2010, when Forrester projects that there will be 14 billion devices connected to the Internet. Relatively few of them will be computers (there are just 93 million computers hooked up to the Internet now). Most of them, instead, will be ordinary appliances and machines--refrigerators, automobiles, gas pumps--retrofitted with computer chips that transmit real-time data across the Internet.
Howe explains the workings of the eXtended Internet by offering the example of a home in New England, where people are reluctant to leave for the winter for fear that their pipes might freeze and burst. With the X Internet, he says, a computerized device might detect temperature drops and automatically adjust thermostats--but only when needed, so as not to waste energy. Another example: a gas station might install Internet-enabled gasoline pumps at their filling stations. The pumps would log all maintenance information and diagnose potential mechanical problems with cars on the spot, freeing car owners from the tedious and often overlooked periodic inspections.
Separating eXcitement from eXecution
Setting aside the inevitable--and inevitably contentious--privacy questions that such a scenario would provoke, just what does this forecast of "The X Internet" mean for ordinary businesses? Is it just another fanciful techno-speculation like Crichton's Corridor or another endlessly delayed vision like interactive television, or is it indeed destined to become part of our day-to-day information networks in the same way that the ordinary Internet has? And, if so, will it make any difference?
The answer to the first question is no doubt affirmative. Not just mini-applets, but whole Web-based applications, called Web services, are starting to spring up on the Web, fulfilling the longstanding vision of the network as the computer. Research groups like IDC project a bright future for Web services, and they're probably right. If implemented correctly, Web services offer all the promise of packaged and client/server software, but without the headaches. As for the eXtended Internet, one need only drive in one of the growing number of automobiles equipped with a geographical positioning system (GPS) to witness the vision's power and potential. Not only do the GPS systems map the shortest route to one's destination, but their computer-generated voices give drivers a minute-by-minute update on where one is going and how long it is likely to take to get there.
But, in the end, will it matter? After all, Internet-capable television has been widely available for at least five years (and various technologies for interactive television have been around for much longer than that), and still less than 1% of the US population has signed on to such services as Microsoft's WebTV and America Online's AOL-TV. It turns out that only a small proportion of the American television audience actually wants to buy the shoes off Sarah Michelle Gellar's feet or play along with Regis or call up Barry Bonds' batting average for the last five years while watching him pound another home run. Most TV viewers--gasp!--just want to kick back, relax, and watch television.
And more importantly, even if X Internet matters, will it make money? Consider what has to be the winner of the "least likely to succeed" idea from last year: the concept of location-sensitive cell phone advertisements. According to the concepts, GPS-like technology would be installed in shopping malls and downtown shopping districts so that when a pedestrian strolled past, say, Macy's, his cell phone would automatically ring and a computerized voice would begin informing him about the store's 50% off white sale. A few dozen yards later, the phone would ring again, and another computerized voice would begin extolling Pottery Barn's summer furniture sale. And so on.
Silly as it sounds, such ideas are often taken seriously--at least for a while--in some very serious circles. But if well-targeted, well-designed, context-sensitive banner ads continue to generate microscopic and falling click-through rates on the Internet, when Web users are usually both in a position and inclined to stop and take a look at an interesting offer, can interactive commerce opportunities really be expected to prompt higher response rates in even more intrusive and less felicitous situations, such as on cell phones, during television shows, or in automobile-based GPS systems. Nor is the quality of innovation a necessary guarantor of success. Web-based grocery retailers from Streamline to WebVan have dabbled in seemingly useful refrigerator-based technologies that monitor food supplies and automatically place orders when supplies run low, but the innovation to date has been greeted with a large, collective shrug. Some theoretically great ideas, it seams, just aren't worth the trouble.
Does the same fate await "the X Internet"?
The "X" Factors in X Internet Success
The answer is: probably not. But to succeed, innovations that fall under the "X Internet" rubric must meet three commonsense criteria.
First, X Internet innovations must deliver true value to their target audiences. To cite one obvious precautionary tale, the Web services field is hot right now, but Web applications themselves aren't anything new. In 1999, for instance, Web-based calendars were all the rage. Microsoft and AOL, respectively, paid several hundred million dollars for very immature products from little-known companies whose most impressive accomplishment may have been their ability to secure great Internet domain names (jump.com and when.com). But it turned out that most Web calendars were slow, inconvenient, and added little value beyond what paper Day-Timers, Palm Pilots, and Microsoft's own desktop-based Outlook product already delivered. Despite all the hype, not a single Web calendar company ever went public, most of them simply disappeared, and most of the best of them (like AnyDay and Quaartz) were acquired at fire-sale prices. (A few, like eCal and Visto, struggle along.)
Second, X Internet innovations must operate consistently with human behavior. The failure to appreciate this very important reality has been one of the main reasons for the demise of certain entire e-commerce sectors. Online pet stores, for example, carried out some of the most entertaining and memorable advertising campaigns in recent memory, but to little avail: few people, it happened, wanted to order 50-pound bags of dog food by mail. A great many other Web site operators discovered that, for many people, shopping was not the mere mechanical, price-calculating task they assumed, but an actively sought-after "experience"--one that the Internet, with rare exceptions like Amazon and eBay, is a long way from recreating. To avoid the fate of it e-commerce predecessors, the X Internet must act to extend and support existing human behaviors as well as the underlying Internet infrastructure.
Finally, X Internet innovations must be backed by a sound business model. The key problem with many of the most innovative Internet sites and technologies over the past few years is not that they haven't worked--some have worked splendidly--but that they offered no realistic prospect of ever returning their investment. A large majority placed their financial hopes in eyeball-driven advertising or spontaneous shopping, neither of which proved viable over the long-term. A brave few sought to charge fees and subscriptions, but most such offerings proved in the judgment of their target audiences not to be worth even the few pennies or dollars requested. One therefore listens to the proclamations of the X Internet advocates with a certain degree of skepticism: the ideas sound interesting from a technological perspective, but just who is going to pay for them, and why?
Getting the X Internet Right
If businesses keep these thoughts in mind when exploring how and whether to offer access and applications via the X Internet--if they figure out how to get the X Internet right--the promise of payback is high. Otherwise, the X Internet is likely to prove as enduring for most businesses as Crichton's Corridor, engaging while the film is running, but a mere fancy once the lights come back on. Corporate innovators therefore would be well-advised to approach the X Internet with the lights on, and not take all predictions and postulations at face value. As Michael Douglas' secret correspondent warns him throughout "Disclosure," some things are simply not as they seem.
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