The Internet’s Next Thing

Posted by John Lockwood on January 16th, 2007

I wonder if Gary Woods has any word on the Internet’s next thing. I’ll have to ask him some time.

I find myself really wishing I knew what the next thing was, and wanting to get my hands on it.

Blogging was the next thing once, back in 2003 or so when I was first creating this site. It was exciting back then, because there were only a few of us around, and those I knew at that point got along pretty well. The rest of the turkeys in the flock had yet to sort themselves into a pecking order, so my unenviable position in that disreputable heirarchy wasn’t yet obvious. What was once a job I liked, a chance to spend thirty minutes turning Excel into escrows, is now more of a crowded, smelly, middle school cafeteria, reeking of spilled milk and teenage excess, unpopulated by adults.

There are days when I find myself wishing I could just put up a web site and link to a bunch of cheesy-looking, slow-loading, Advanced Access web sites paid for by my out-of-area colleagues. But those days are of course behind us, and we’ve yet to discover the Internet’s next thing. I’m not even sure I’m reading the right people, so the Internet’s next thing is probably already at least eight months old and I haven’t started working with it yet.

So until I find out what it is, I suppose I’ll just have to keep trying to keep a positive attitude, spit out as many market updates as I can, and try to duck when the boys at the next table start shooting paper clips with rubber bands. I’m sure five years from now I won’t even remember having been here.