In software, it's easy to understand what people want, and it's hard to build. Internet stuff is super easy to build, but it's hard to know what people want.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
People enjoy the interaction on the Internet, and the feeling of belonging to a group that does something interesting: that's how some software projects are born.
People - especially the geeks who created it - have tended to look at the Internet as something that's hermetically sealed: there's the Internet and the rest of the world. But that's not how people want to use the Internet. They want to use it as a way of better navigating the real world.
Computers have become more friendly, understandable, and lots of years and thought have been put into developing software to convince people that they want and need a computer.
For me, the Internet's like music. I don't like working without it. I will tune it out for hours at a time, as I get lost in the work, but I'd know if it wasn't there. If that makes sense.
Choosing a single most important development is incredibly hard to do because a lot of different things had to happen before the Internet could be deployed in the fashion it is today.
We can't ever forget that the Internet now is just a staid utility. The exciting platforms are software applications that are very, very simple.
Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done.
The beauty of the Internet is there's a niche market for everything, and if you can focus on it, you can build a sustainable and viable business of it.
Web users ultimately want to get at data quickly and easily. They don't care as much about attractive sites and pretty design.
People are good at figuring out what's attractive, and computers are good at quickly searching and finding. You put them together, and bang!