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Thoughts on the online/offiine apps controversy

So David from 37Signals dropped the f-bomb in a particularly myopic post wherein he tries to argue that we don't need offline functionality from online applications because, "like dude... we're all connected all of the time and why don't you read a book or something when you're on a plane?". This unsurprisingly (and perhaps by design?) emotional screed has generated a lengthy comments thread (now 200 deep and sure to get bigger) in which folks from around the world do their best to educate the author (and presumably his pals at the company) as to the reality outside the world of a developer living in a major US city. It's great intertubes drama if you're a fan of that sort of thing.
Written by Marc Orchant, Contributor

So David from 37Signals dropped the f-bomb in a particularly myopic post wherein he tries to argue that we don't need offline functionality from online applications because, "like dude... we're all connected all of the time and why don't you read a book or something when you're on a plane?". This unsurprisingly (and perhaps by design?) emotional screed has generated a lengthy comments thread (now 200 deep and sure to get bigger) in which folks from around the world do their best to educate the author (and presumably his pals at the company) as to the reality outside the world of a developer living in a major US city. It's great intertubes drama if you're a fan of that sort of thing.

The simple fact of the matter is that in most of the world (and even a good sized chunk of the US), ubiquitous connectivity is a pipe dream. Add to this inarguable fact that the question of online/offline application functionality transcends the availability of connectivity and you've got the makings of a severely polarized debate.

Here's my $.02 worth. Whether you can establish and maintain a high speed connection to the tubes is only a piece of this debate. And the fact is, in most of the world, you can't reliably or affordably get access anytime you want it. I don't do a great deal of international travel but I do live in a largely rural, unpopulated part of the country and when you're in the great outdoors between human enclaves there is no signal... much less 37 of them to choose from.

The larger perspective has everything to do with human behavior, conditioned thinking, and generational dispositions toward working and living in the cloud. And from this perspective, this tempest is an early warning of the bigger storm to come. When you understand that the perspective David and his pals come from is fairly typical of American 20-somethings (Tapscott's Net Generation or Ahonen's and Moore's Gen C), and it doesn't yet align with the one those of us who are either older or living in the rest of world look at things from, you understand the nature of the tumult that we are screaming towards.

Anyone who grew up in pre-net times has been conditioned to accept the conventional wisdom that locally stored data and locally installed applications are better. We "own" the data. We have "control". We are more "secure". Whether any of those notions remain viable once we plug into the tubes and expose ourselves to a global, public network with its fair share of bad people is an argument I'll leave to folks (like Bruce Schneier on security) who are much smarter and more experienced than I at discussing those issues.

I'm concerned here with our conditioning and the knee-jerk response we've been trained to have to the idea of putting data into the cloud or on relying on the inconsistent ability to connect to the tubes that most of us experience some or all of the time. Five years ago, I still regularly encountered fear responses from people about buying books online. The success enjoyed by e-tailers like Amazon.com and the world's garage sale (eBay) is proof that that we've overcome that hurdle. We have been conditioned to think that where the bits reside and "where" we conduct our transactions (social, commercial, and business) is important. That is a hard prejudice to let go of once it's been embedded.

The net generation has never known a world without the network. They have different expectations and experiences than I (we) do. As a result, their comfort level about working online is profoundly different. They approach the idea of work and career differently that we have and they use mobile and net technologies in a dramatically different, and much more personal, way than most of us in the pre-net generation. Have you watched twenty-somethings use MySpace? I have – I sat next to my daughter (22) and her roommate (20) yesterday watching them cruise their social networks – and it's nothing like the way I use the tubes.

That's not to say that some of us haven't fully embraced the changes that are taking place all around us. If you're reading blogs in an aggregator, use webmail, remote desktop services, instant messaging, internet telephony, or online storage you're beginning to figure out the world that's coming. If you use all of the above, you've arguably made the transition. And you're in the distinct minority.

Step across the line that divides pre-net from native and flip all of that around. It really is a matter of perspective. And conditioning. Hubris and myopia aside, David's post is an early warning about the storm that's rumbling in the distance. It has profound implications for all of us. Whether you are a teacher trying to engage next gen students, a business looking to recruit and retain the next generation of information workers and managers for your organization, or a developer hoping to redefine how we manipulate and manage information, the changes will continue to come. And they will only become more dramatic and pronounced as the net becomes more ubiquitous. But there's more to this debate than simple connectivity. And the sooner we all accept that, the better the debate will be.

Update: fixed a few typos. 

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