It's not so big a jump from nostalgia to predictions. To predict where an object will end up, you have to know where it's been.

So, where will the Net end up?

Remember in Net Nostalgia when I reminded you about the 'Club', that special group of people who had internet access way back when IE 5.0 was no more than a twinkle in Bill Gates eye. The good news is that this club may just find its way back into the scheme of things. The bad news is you won't be able to find it.

So, how is this turn-around possible?

We have to look at the way the net is evolving. As big business begins to take over the net and push products at us with more increasingly intrusive marketing techniques, they have to find ways of making it easier for folk to see their products. Consider the Tv, it is by far the largest platform to date for the marketing gurus'. When you 'Change Channels' on the Tv, you don't think "I'll go to 75241 Ghtz and see what's on". No, you just flick a button on the remote and browse through the channels until you find one that you want. The thing about that remote is that it directs you to the 'established' stop off points which have been taken over by the tv companies.

That day is nearly upon us. In the very near future, the only people who will remember the protocols for browsing will be the 'Geeks'. Personal homepages will be relegated even further down the trash chute and will be inaccessible to anybody who purchases the 'Standard' net tv. Only the people who retain their internet access through computer will be able to easily browse the 'whole' net. This is what the big commercial giants want. It began with 'Push Technology'. PT is still with us, though somebody thought the term was a bit too aggressive and so stopped calling it that.

So, you've got your net tv and you can access thousands of sites and watch hundreds of tv channels.

Problem with this is that there are a few million more sites out there that you will never see. They will be left for a dwindling few who will once again feel 'special' These 'Surfers' will again be part of the elite, part of the Internet Revolution.
Until the big boys decide that unauthorised surfing is subversive.

But that's another story.