Cuban Expounds Upon How Internet is "Dead and Boring"...

Came across a post on Blog Maverick, aka Mark Cuban's soapbox, from last week where Mr. Cuban defends his critique of the Internet as being "dead and boring."

Earlier this month, I refuted Cuban's initial remarks along these lines by commenting on how the issue with the Internet isn't a lack of innovation, it's a lack of adoption.

But in his latest writings, he responded to criticisms of his remarks, expounding further on his belief that the stabilization of the Internet as a platform for content, commerce, and applications, and the lack of sufficient growth in broadband speeds have retarded innovation online.

In his words: "Some of you may not want to admit it, but that's exactly what the net has become. A utility. It has stopped evolving. Your Internet experience today is not much different than it was 5 years ago."

While on the surface stating that the Internet of today is largely the same as the Internet of 2002 might sound preposterous, this isn't the first time I've heard this sentiment expressed.

And when I think about, I can somewhat understand where this is coming from. What are we doing differently today that we weren't 5 years ago?

YouTube? BitTorrent? Watching TV shows online? These three all revolve around the same principle of computer-as-viewing-device.

Interfaces are certainly slicker, video's popping up everywhere, and there's more information available online than ever, but when you really think about it, the promises of the Internet were the same five years ago as they are today, things like telemedicine and egovernment, and they're still largely unrealized, or at a minimum a long way from being an integral part of most of our lives.

Included in Cuban's arguments are his beliefs that to reinvigorate that innovative spirit we need to realize a massive jump in available bandwidth, citing a need for 1Gbps access to every home.

Previously, I've argued for the possibilities of universal 5Mbps access as a more attainable goal to focus on in the near-term.

But I also wanted to share another angle on this, which builds off of the analogy of broadband as utility:

We've reached a point where most households have access to bandwidth (electricity), but only enough to run one application (appliance) at a time. So you can run your fridge or your microwave but not both simultaneously without degrading their performance.

Unlike the early days of electricity, though, where there were only a few appliances demanding electricity (lights, radio, etc), today there are dozens of different kinds of applications that need bandwidth (videocalling, security, P2P, webcasting, virtual worlds, et al).

While I totally agree with Cuban's assertion that the lack of cheaper, faster broadband has hampered innovation, where I differ from him is in giving up on the Internet until we reach a utopian future where everyone has hundreds of megs to the home.

Instead, what I marvel at is how much innovation we've already experienced given how little bandwidth we've had to work with. And my excitement only grows when I think about the possibilities of the bandwidth available in fiber communities across the country.