Digital Home Thoughts: Closed Communities And The Web

"People who find the Web distasteful — ugly, uncivilized — have nonetheless been forced to live there: it’s the place to go for jobs, resources, services, social life, the future. But now, with the purchase of an iPhone or an iPad, there’s a way out, an orderly suburb that lets you sample the Web’s opportunities without having to mix with the riffraff. This suburb is defined by apps from the glittering App Store: neat, cute homes far from the Web city center, out in pristine Applecrest Estates."

As the Internet has matured, I believe that it has started to mimic a lot of the behavior that is shown in real world communities. It has gone from a frontier to a place of commerce. Now, we are seeing the next step, which is the division of the Internet into little pieces and while the App store may be an obvious example, it certainly is not the first. I have seen studies that suggest that most people now only visit a certain set of websites on a regular basis and rarely stray from the norm to explore what is out there. The concept of a "comfortable" Internet is more appealing than the risk of exploring new websites. The embrace of like minded people is more enjoyable than testing out new relationships. Of course, this is not true for everyone, but there are a large group of people out there who fall into this trend. I do not know if there is any way to stop this trend, but I hope that every once a while, people will realize that they might just be living in a bubble, and need to explore.