Digital Wild West
Recently I've been watching a few cheesy Western movies. You know, those movies where people do nothing else than hanging and drinking in the saloon, digging for gold, exploring land, getting in conflicts with the natives, robbing and being robbed.
And after that I realized: Even though the web is entering some kind of maturity phase, the current state is very similar to what took place in the second half of the 19th Century in Western North America. Companies are exploring the digital space, establishing businesses online and experimenting with different methods to earn money. Legit ones and questionable ones. People are flocking to the digital space, creating profiles everywhere and moving around with their (digital) home, before finally settling down. Authorities are trying to keep up with the exploration of the digital space, but lack resources and knowledge. So they are always a few steps behind and fail to enforce the law, which exists, but is not adjusted to the new circumstances. Do you see the analogy? In 10 or 20 years, people might refer to the first decade of the new millennium as the digital wild west. If that's the state we are in right now, what does that say about the time to come? More rules and more law enforcement, but also more security and structure. Will that be good for the web? We'll see.