The Future OS: The Web of Flow

Recent grumping about the archaic quality of Windows (see From Win32 to Cocoa: a Windows user’s conversion to Mac OS X: Page 1, and Gartner: Windows is “Collapsing” | Advice and Opinion) relative to Macintosh. I chimed in the other day (see /Message: Gartner Disses Windows, But Where’s The Breakthrough OS?), making a weak case for a new approach to the idea of OS.

The Web as the OS is a concept that has animated Web 2.0 develop thinking, but it hasn’t manifested itself directly at the client machine level. People are still running Windows and Mac OS X on their ‘personal computers’ — a term that harkens back to the days when computing was performed primarily on mainframes or ‘minicomputers’. However, we are in a time when ‘PCs’ are just one example of single-user computing devices, with smart phones and other mobile devices rapidly blurring the space.

I propose that these single user devices are becoming the edge of the web (and we are the edglings). Our paths of interaction, as individuals, are increasingly mediated through web connection, and the now out-of-date model of disconnected use of functional applications — typified by Microsoft Office on Windows XP — are dead, or dying very quickly.

The local file store is going away. I move all my photos to Flickr, as soon as I can. My documents — to the extent that I actually create Word or PPT style documents anymore — reside on Google or Zoho. Increasingly, the writing that I create and share with others has been created and presented through web applications, like Typepad (my blogging platform), or SlideRocket (presentations), Zoho, or Google. In essence I have come to treat the file store on my Mac as a local cache — temporary storage of the active docs I am working on or reviewing — but where the primary version is stored in the cloud.

To a great extent, this is driven by the ubiquity of Web access. I now have an EVDO card, so I am almost never offline. Likewise, my n95 phone and my 810 Nokia tablet are always web accessible.

The odd thing is that this new state of connectedness with a greater Web, has not really made a dent in the premises underlying the OSs that we are using. Definitely not in Windows, but not really in Mac OS X either. Apple’s Web orientation has been amazingly minimal on the Mac: .Mac is laughable, and applications like TimeMachine and iTunes are firmly wedded to the notion that the Mac file store is the primary locus for user files. iTunes does not support backup or access of your music in the cloud, although that should be a basic and revenue generating service. TimeMachine ditto. The work on iPhone is a breakthough, since that is conceived of as an always connected device. I am sure that experience will backwash into future Mac OS thinking, but it hasn’t had a profound impact yet.

Think for a moment past a document-centric notion of work, and the reliance on mapping documents to physical files. We aren’t even acting as if the Web is primary, today, or that we have better ways to store and compose information than files on a PC’s hard drive.

A few months ago, Jason Calacanis was advancing a view about ‘Web 3.0’, a term that I think needs to stay in scare quotes, but I responded by saying:

[from /Message: Jason Calacanis on Web 3.0]

[…]

Personally, I feel the vague lineaments of something beyond Web 2.0, and they involve some fairly radical steps. Imagine a Web without browsers. Imagine breaking completely away from the document metaphor, or a true blurring of application and information. That’s what Web 3.0 will be, but I bet we will call it something else.

So I have come to believe that the elements of Web 2.0 - the social revolution, movement toward open web and the web as a platform — have a long way to be played out: at least another five years I would say. For us to be moving into another era, post Web 2.0, I can’t say much with certainty except that we will have to see the emergence of edge computing metaphors that are based on being online all the time, and a movement away from files, documents, and, yes, the browser. Yes, even the notion of a single all-purpose tool for wandering around the Web, moving from URL to URL, from file to file; even that idea of the Web of Pages will have to fall.

And to replace it: the Web of Flow. We are starting to see the start of that, in Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku, Friendfeed, and soon, Workstreamr. A new basis of interaction through connected relationships, ubiquitous conncectivity, and rich, outside-the-browser client applications.

I would bet more on Apple than Microsoft at this point, although paradoxically, it is Microsoft who might be forced to junk Windows after the Vista mess. Maybe they could start fresh, with blank piece of paper.

But I think it’s more likely to come from the edge itself. Some small upstart devises some cool stuff that people can load on their machine that acts as a virtual webfooted OS, one based around post-file, post-document, and flow principles. Maybe some tiny version of Linux that can run under Mac OS and Windows as an app, to begin with. It gets acquired by Google or Apple. Native versions are created for various chipsets, including handhelds, phones, and PCs. People switch. The original old school OS’s are left high and dry, and ‘Webfoot’ becomes the dominant platform.

It’s coming, via one scenario or the other.