According to the latest cover story in tech bible Wired, “The web is dead, long live the internet.” The headline is attached to a feature by the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Chris Anderson, outlining what he calls the abandonment of “the open, unfettered web… for simpler, sleeker services”. It has generated a huge reaction online.

Are we heading for a less romantic digital world, in which open-ended surfing of the web is replaced by an ordered world phone “apps”, tailored to individual preferences? A world in which ‘gated digital communities’ - whether comprising virtual gamers or fitness fanatics - organise themselves ever more efficiently but ignore the wider web-based possibility of the unexpected.

To read this opinion piece by Tom Chatfield in The Observer in full, see:
www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/aug/22/smartphones-threaten-web

Also see:

Are the iPhone and iPad killing the world wide web? by John Naughton
“The web is dead. Long live the internet” was the headline for an article by Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff in the latest issue of Wired magazine. “Over the past few years,” burbled Anderson-Wolff, “one of the most important shifts in the digital world has been the move from the wide-open web to semi-closed platforms that use the internet for transport but not the browser for display.

“It’s driven primarily by the rise of the iPhone model of mobile computing, and it’s a world Google can’t crawl, one where HTML doesn’t rule. And it’s the world that consumers are increasingly choosing, not because they’re rejecting the idea of the web but because these dedicated platforms often just work better or fit better into their lives (the screen comes to them, they don’t have to go to the screen). The fact that it’s easier for companies to make money on these platforms only cements the trend. Producers and consumers agree: The web is not the culmination of the digital revolution.”
www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/aug/22/wired-anderson-wolff-web-usage