The next phase of the Internet's development is consumer broadband. It requires a different approach. The problem is that as we move to mass adoption of broadband, the demand for content and services outstrips the ability of the centralized cloud (the Web) to economically and technologically provide those services. Add to this the huge numbers of PCs with fast processors and plentiful storage (~140 m PCs with 1 GHz processors and 40 -120 Gb of storage will be sold in 2002) that will be sold this year. These beefy desktops demand to do more than sit idle using a browser. The Web isn't a solution for consumer broadband and beefy PCs. What is needed is decentralized software platform that lives on the desktop. A platform that leverages the standards of the Interent to do new things.
This is a called a Personal Broadcast Network. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
John's absolutely right, and I encourage my readers to look at all his comments here on this subject. Our PCs have enormous power that is not being used. While I only have a 128K connection today, it could be used far more effectively than it has been to date. The "Radio" news aggregator is a bit like Tivo for news and information, as it collects the information in the background and I can review it at my leisure. We just need to expand it so that it can both aggregate and download the full details.
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