CrunchGear Futurist: Web 2.0 Is Doomed By Laziness

This is the weakest argument against Web 2.0 yet:

[from The Futurist: Will Human Laziness Burst The Web 2.0 Bubble? by Seth Porges]

[...]

Right now, the bubble that the Web exists in is not so much a financial bubble as it is a time bubble. There is still a novelty for a lot of people associated with finding friends on social networking sites, Digging their favorite stories, updating articles about the history of pinball, and leaving comments on their favorite blogs. But that will wear off. People will revert back to the things they used to do: like Minesweeper and work. And without millions of generous mouse-clickers, most of Web 2.0 is weakened, if not entirely useless.

Whenever it gets here, Web 3.0 may be bigger and better than what we have now, but you can bet that it won’t be foolish enough to rely on the unreliable. And there is nothing more unreliable than human nature.

So, if I understand this, the Web revolution will grind to a halt because people don't really want to be connected to others, it's just a fad. No, they want to go back to playing Whack-A-Mole and Day-Trading.

Better stick to writing about personal electronics, Seth.

Comments

[Anne Z.]

That's so ridiculous... to think it's about novelty?

[Stowe Boyd]

Anne -

Yes, it's dumb.

[Mikael Bergkvist]

The new problem is for people finding all the new web20 sites, since they havent all been listed by Google, or are not ranked very high, and people dont know they exists, or that that type of service exists.
There should be a search option, like 'web20 services', with explanations attached, giving people an idea of what this or that site actually does.

[David Cushman]

Looks to me like he's been seduced by the whole mass media/industrial world. Perhaps he just needs to imagine the rest of human history.
The natural state is being returned to us, not toyed with by thrill seekers.
It's almost as if Seth believes the network is just the latest form of mass entertainment.

[Bill Seitz]

Well, to give him some credit, it seems fair to assume that the idea that every new network will immediately get tried by a big portion of people who are already on other networks, will not stay true forever....

[Alice]

It seems that the technologists have forgotten a fundamental truth: the systems are here to serve people, and people crave communication and expression. I guess Seth figures that the entire history of humankind is just a "fad". ;-)

Alice