What’s the next computing paradigm?

Yesterday, Chris Dixon wrote a succinct post outlining the decline of the mobile web, which raised some very good questions.

The openness of the Internet is incredible — something I think many people take for granted. It has created a (developed) world today of unlimited access to information and communication, a world that I don’t think was fully imaginable when the world wide web was first created.

But as the dominant computing platform shifts from PCs to mobile devices, the dominant interaction model is becoming native, platform-specific apps. These create a more closed system — the opposite of what the web has enabled — with Apple and Google (currently) as giant gatekeepers.

Most will agree that native apps provide a better computing experience than the mobile web. But finding/installing new apps is not as seamless as typing in a URL or a 4-word keyword search on Google, not to mention the difficulty in accounting for more than a page or two of dedicated apps.

There’s still 5 billion people without a smart phone — a cohort of people who are equally as unfamiliar with apps that’ve been dowloaded 5 times as they are with apps that have been downloaded 5 million times. In the time it takes them to acquire a smart phone, there will be an onslaught of new apps created. There has to be some new computing paradigm that makes it easy for any person to take advantage of the power of the vast library of apps.

Is Apple is working to mitigate this process via Siri + Spotlight?

Will a company like Wildcard reinvent the mobile browser?

With both Google’s Play and Apple’s App Store each having over 1M apps, will more new apps/tech companies focus on building infrastructure that powers existing apps? Building a social networking app today, for example — competing with the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. — would be incredibly difficult. Creating a way to compress files*, however, might be a big business. Why not use the revenues from that company to then subsidize the creation of a brand (which is what many consumer-facing apps ultimately end up building)? It’s the infastructure (or “plumbing”), in my opinion, that will make the largest, most enduring impact.

In the words of Kanye West: I don’t have the answers. But I’m excited to see what happens. And because I realize I don’t have all the answers, I’m happy to hear what you think — tweet me.

Yes, I was inspired by the first episode of “Silicon Valley.” I don’t live or work in SV, so any review I provide wouldn’t hold much value. Most reviewers seemed to enjoy it, however.