The Future of Web Browsers

[Cory]

Do you think web browsers are going to be a lot similar to how they are now in the foreseeable future or do you think some web browsers may see drastic changes that transform them into something entirely different for your browsing experience?

 

[Strawberry]

I'm in no way an expert on how software works or how it is developed, I literally just use Chrome for my day-to-day browsing. As long as I can access sites I need to, they look fine and are compatible, then I don't really need much else! So for me, I don't know what could be added or changed.

I would be interested to see what your thoughts are in what exactly we could potentially see in the future to revolutionise our way of viewing the web?

 

[Arantor]

So the main question is not really 'how will browsers change' but much more on the nature of 'how the web will change'.

You see, we're still ultimately ruled in no small part by the original underpinnings of the web's design: a series of interconnected documents being marked up for formatting. We're building the most complex applications on top of something never designed for applications. And we're doing it faster and more complicatedly than ever before.

The question must become how we want to interact with the web at all - because a large amount of what makes up the web even now is 'documents' published in a form and consumed - news sites, blogs still follow this basic premise. Forums too, in the vein of a topic with comments given equal weight (whether divided into 'pages' or not, doesn't really matter)

There's also other strands that are in the mix; the computing revolution has seen several phases of 'the empire long united must divide, the empire long divided must unite; thus it has ever been' - remember that, infamously, in 1943, IBM's chief exec noted that he thought there was a market for maybe 5 computers worldwide. Even the earliest big iron worked in a mainframe style - central machine, every device hanging off it a 'dumb terminal' with no processing of its own, through the first home computer revolution where everyone had their own device (think Apple IIe/C64/ZX Spectrum sort of era) where networking was limited, through the fat-client era of earlier Windows, through the rise of dial-up then broadband, to the ubiquity of 3/4G-backed connectivity where we've reverted back to the centralised model with thin clients. We're about due for a mass and rampant decentralisation of services and products where the always-online, (relative) dumb terminal model is rejected.

Follow the train of thought from that and you start asking about the subscription model that Microsoft is pushing and whether there's alternatives. You start questioning all the status quo around interactivity. I think Twitter's recent drama brought the question to the front about centralised vs decentralised, I think Facebook pushing the metaverse angle has done similar along a different track.

I actually wonder if the web will revert back away from this weird high fidelity experience towards *documents* and a different application delivery method will ensue; after all, the iPhone wasn't meant to have an app store originally... but money prevailed. Maybe it's time for a social revolution to eschew money - that it's about the *people* and their connections.

 

[Anachiwo]

There's every possibility web browsers will be changed to a considerable extent in the future. With the use of AI and more advanced technologies, we are in for a lot of surprises no doubt.