The Experimentation-Commercialisation Cycle

Friday, August 17, 2007

Something popped into my head this afternoon. I'd been been thinking about this general feeling of malaise, disinterest and lack of energy that is being mentioned here and there. Jeremy Kieth mentioned it and Molly mentioned it, but James 'Brothercake' Edwards expressed it the best in his SitePoint blog post.

But capitalism cheapens everything it touches, and Web 2.0 is a capitalist bubble. It's no surprise that some of us get so disheartened trying to advocate better accessibility. We find ourselves in a situation where things were just starting to get better - the pro-standards and accessibility wave had just begun to really repair the damage caused by the last dotcom bubble. Then suddenly a new one forms, and everything goes to shit again.

I've always been in this industry for the ejoyment of experimentation: playing with technology, constantly learning and being humbled by the obvious potential of it all. The industry seems to go through these cycles of experimentaton to commercialisation and back again. The experimentation phase has always interested me but the commercialisation hasn't really. I think we're on the commercialisation phase of the cycle at the moment: hence so much attention to money making schemes... the experimentation continues of course but it just doesn't get any coverage while the money is being made.

The only thing that matters is that the experimentation continues by people who care that it continues. I mentioned this to Adrian and he said that Spring is his shed: "I just like hanging out tinkering, making things in my shed to help me do more cool things with my shed. It's recursive."

And that is spot on: it's recursive.

Keep on trucking everyone!

Random outings from a chaotic mind