The Future of the Internet

by Paul O'Brien / Thursday, 02 October 2008 / Published in Fun, Google, Insights / Research

Having pointed out my complete ignorance of the cheerleading world yesterday (“Can I Get an S?”??), I feel I need to steer the laughs, jeers, and finger pointing as far away from me as possible in hopes of staving off the cheer hate mail no doubt being written to me even as we speak. Obviously, I meant to say, “Would you give me an S?” “Please”

Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch, Rewiring the World from Edison to Google has some great insights on the impacts Google and the evolution of the internet have had on our lives. At the end of the day, he, with a common-man voice on the world stage, perhaps better validates that the future of marketing is digital than the industry pundits and experts so valiantly trying to point out the same thing.

Where’s the humor in that? He shares those thoughts with quintessential American Steven Colbert. Enjoy!

Related Questions

What is Infrastructure as a Service?

IaaS is the layer of the technology stack that other software is built on top of, not used directly by end users, but embedded into the products that end users do use. Stripe, Twilio, and Plaid are canonical examples: most people have never heard of them, yet they collectively process a material fraction of the world's digital economy. The textbook definition covers servers, storage, and compute over the internet, but the concept has expanded well beyond cloud hardware into payments, communications, identity verification, payroll, healthcare data, and more.

Can a region be great for small businesses but bad for startups?

Absolutely, and this is common. Strong main street economies, low cost of living, and good quality of life attract lifestyle businesses and remote workers. None of those factors necessarily produce venture-scale deal flow. The conditions that create great places to live are not the same conditions that create great startup ecosystems.

How does IaaS apply to startup development organizations (SDOs) specifically?

Incubators and accelerators have a serious, operationally complex job: give founders access to global mentor networks, connect them to investors, manage deal rooms, deliver curriculum, and track relationships over time. Most do it with a stitched-together combination of video tools, Slack groups, shared Google Drive folders, and spreadsheets of mentor contacts nobody updates. The program director becomes a part-time IT administrator. What an SDO actually needs is civic infrastructure; purpose-built and comprehensive enough to deliver on what it promises founders. Ironically, an incubator's job is to teach founders to stop building things they don't need to build, and then those same incubators do exactly that with their own operations

How is IaaS different from SaaS?

SaaS (Software as a Service) is a finished product sold directly to users; you log in and use it. Infrastructure as a Service is a capability sold to builders; you embed it into a product so your customers can use it without knowing it's there. The distinction isn't about which company you're buying from; it's about which layer of the stack you're buying. AWS S3 is infrastructure: raw capability you build on top of. Google Sheets is SaaS: a finished product you use directly. One sells to builders. The other sells to users.

How should founders deal with imposter syndrome?

By understanding the concept of sprezzatura — the art of making difficult things look effortless. The goal isn't eliminating self-doubt; it's developing the competence and presence that allows you to operate despite it. Confidence that requires the absence of doubt is fragile. Competence that functions through doubt is durable.