As I try to come up with a theme for the first Asian edition of LIFT, I am somehow getting a strong intuition that we are leaving the revolutionary phase of the Web industry, and about to enter a more boring and less innovative period (Bruce Sterling won’t disagree with me). A number of weak signals seem to be announcing the end the cycle of hyper innovation that marked what will one day be remembered as the early days of the web, or the 1994 - 2006 period.

At Kinnernet, I jokingly told Thomas Mygdal that the Silicon Valley is facing Detroit-a-zation. What were once innovative and agile startups are increasingly becoming pachyderms hampered by overgrowth, internal politics and shareholders pressure. The big CEOs - once mavericks celebrated and envied by the whole business community - are becoming bus drivers. Eric Schmid’s days probably look more and more like the ones of Marcel Ospel or Carlos Ghosn, and with each hour passing Google’s organization inches closer to the IBM model rather than the edonistic company proned by the Zentral Intelligenz Agentur. Web companies employees have too much work, need to stay later than their bosses, have to raise their profiles to get good reviews, etc.

While in Korea, I systematically asked my interlocutors what they thought were today’s “hot” topics. Their answers: ubiquitous computing, urban technologies, robotic toys, green technologies, open source objects, etc. The web? “It was interesting seven years ago!”  It is now a commodity, and this has a deep impact on the industry and on its culture. What happened?

• The rise of incremental innovation
  Incremental innovation has replaced fundamental innovation. We are not discovering new territories - like when Friendster, Google, or Hotmail were invented - but are developing the ones that have already been explored by others, bringing smaller improvements like a new interface, a new way to receive an information, a new mix of existing services. A striking example of this is social networks, where entrepreneurs are almost done exploring the different possibilities. It started with networks about the past (classmates, copains d’avant), then about the present (Facebook, MySpace), and now it is about the future (dopplr, mixin). Nothing revolutionary, just a lot of talented people busy not leaving any stone unturned in the same field, exploring a finite space.
• Maturity = less hunger
  The industry is more mature, which means many of us have something to lose. We all have a status, more conflicts of interest then ever (the web 2.0 world is skunk drunk on its own kool-aid), bigger egos. Time goes by, and most industry leaders are fifteen years older and nature made them more risk averse. Sneakers have been replaced by leather shoes, and the Johnny Cash rule (which says you are never as good as when hungry) is now playing against us.
• Early adopters became gatekeepers?
  Where is the new generation? Aren’t they interested, or is it that we don’t listen to them? Have we - the early adopters - become gate keepers? Every time I go to a web conference I am struck by the fact the average age of speakers is always around 40. What happened here? Do we really only have Kevin Rose, Matt Mullenweg and Mark Frauenfeld innovating under 25? Could it be that there is a whole layer of innovation we simply don’t look at?
• Excitement is building in other fields
  If you haven’t watched Bruno Bonnel and Rafi Haladjan’s talks you probably haven’t noticed, but robotic toys have a huge future. Mobile continues to rock Africa and Asia, green technologies are the hot topic in Sand Hill Road, new interfaces are opening up huge possibilities. It seems other fields are offering more exciting opportunities than the web!

I am sure I could come up with more reasons but let’s hear your opinion first. Do you feel like it is the end of a cycle? Why? Is the web just another industry where success depends more on having an MBA than a revolutionary idea and a taste for risk?

Update: ChangeWaves says the Infotech sector is not yet geriatric. We can resume normal breathing.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 12:33 am and is filed under asia, food for thought, web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.