The JavaScript exploit that clobbered Twitter's web interface this morning prompted me to wonder whether the web as it's accessed through the venerable web browser may be falling victim to a certain "ghettoization."
Here's my thinking: Given enough development horsepower and a certain amount of market traction, any networked service that can be monetized can probably afford to develop Android, Blackberry and iOS versions of its software. In other words, leave the traffic and noise and smog and crime of the web for the application equivalent of a gated community in the Hamptons. In today's case, folks who had installed applications to interface with Twitter were not affected, only those who visited via its lowest common denominator, the web browser.
One big strength of the web is that it often makes it easy to look passably good even in the shallower sections of the learning curve, particularly if you can afford the tools. (Aside: Think of the tools as what one of my college friends called the "boom-chicka organ." If you remember those from the 70s and 80s--complete with marimbas and every sound effect but a cowbell--my commiserations. I'd like to block those memories, too, but it just ain't happenin'...)
One big weakness of the web is that it often makes it easy to look passably good even in the shallower sections of the learning curve, particularly if you can afford the tools. In short, the low barrier to entry drives a need for product/service differentiation. Enter the smartphone and their various application bazaars and it's not difficult to imagine a reprise of what happened to the urban landscape when the automobile and little-boxes-on-the-hillside-made-of-ticky-tacky became minimum standards of living in the American psyche.
As a metaphor, that probably only goes so far. I don't think that the riots of the 60s are likely to repeat themselves within the browser. But there's more than a little bit of egalitarianism baked into the ethos of the web. Gated communities not so much. That loss of egalitarianism would, in my opinion, be a grave loss to us all, no matter where we place our "Welcome" mat.
