The Network Is The Computer. Again.
Ever since John Gage of Sun first offered the phrase “The Network Is The Computer” to the world, people have been using it as inspiration. Sun use it to explain that they mean Social Networking without actually using the phrase (they prefer the old fashioned “community”).
I think web 2.0 developers are offering a new perspective on the phrase. There was a time that if I wanted my computer to do a job, I would find or buy a piece of software that was engineered to cause that job to be performed. The Internet and the Web 2.0 culture is changing this model completely. Its becoming the case that the computer in front of me is stupid, and some cluster of servers in MarketPost Tower, San Jose actually does all the work.
Enter Mint. Mint is self described as refreshing money management. Sound like what Quicken does if I install it on my computer, but with the word ‘refreshing’ in front? It’s refreshing (well, different) because to use their software I simply need to visit their website and sign up. Mint will learn about your spending via your online banking accounts, and aggregate your personal finance situation into one simple application. It sounds so simple, and solves no problems that weren’t also solved with personal finance software on the ZX Spectrum. And yet on Launch day just a couple of months ago it won $50,000 in the innovation contest, ‘Techcrunch40‘.
There’s two lessons from this. Firstly, there’s a new blueprint for guaranteed success in the web 2.0 world, and that is if you can take all the features of a market leading piece of traditional software, and build that functionality into a website, then you will be heralded an innovator. But you have to be the first person to do that. So hurry.
Secondly, and this is a lesson that wont be learned by the general public for a while, is that putting your private data in a central place that you do not control, is a weak point of attack when someone wants to learn something about you. Maybe someone wants to target your assets. Maybe the government want a nosey in what you’ve been spending. Maybe a consumer profiling company want to run a survey. They only have to get hold of one set of keys to your mint account, and all three of these groups can do what they want with your data. If my computers were stolen, then an expert would be able to find out quite a lot about me. If I put my data online and it gets stolen, the same can happen. And if everyone puts their data online in the same place, then it becomes very attractive to break in and steal it for lots of groups.
Comments
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
