“The Internet is doomed to fail”: Don Norman extrapolates wildly

Posted 14/02/2011 by Jaimes

Norman argues that innovations are inherently open whilst new, until corporations and governments realise the potential of charging tolls for access and start to restrict it.

He raises two key examples regarding the current mobile network infrastructure. Access: service providers failing to provide affordable roaming and Closed platforms: walled gardens growing around device platforms.

However I’d say he overreaches when he argues that this is a wider internet trend.

The focus on access is primarily a mobile issue. The access based examples he cites with regard to the broader internet are significantly less weighty - upload / download speeds don’t worry me as much as foreign roaming charges. And mobile access is so restricted because it started off as a bandwidth auction by government, rather than incremental, open distribution by smaller players.

As more and more access does come through mobile, this may become the fate of the wider network, and a warning is valid. However, the article extrapolates a little too far in service of this warning.

The last few years have seen plenty of headway for the open internet on the mobile space, rather than the other way around. Walled app platforms are relevant, but a device issue rather than a network issue.

The valid arguments here about network access get swamped by fears about platform access. To my mind, both issues are important and deserve debate. Conflating them as evidence of the coming of ‘corporate warlords’ doesn’t really get to the heart of the issue.

Read the full thing here.