Usability Views Article Details  home | timeline | recent | popular | e-reports | userati | books | about  The Internet Is Broken (19 Dec 2005) Indeed, for the average user, the Internet these days all too often resembles New York's Times Square in the 1980s. It was exciting and vibrant, but you made sure to keep your head down, lest you be offered drugs, robbed, or harangued by the insane. Times Square has been cleaned up, but the Internet keeps getting worse, both at the user's level, and -- in the view of Clark and others -- deep within its architecture. Over the years, as Internet applications proliferated -- wireless devices, peer-to-peer file-sharing, telephony -- companies and network engineers came up with ingenious and expedient patches, plugs, and workarounds. The result is that the originally simple communications technology has become a complex and convoluted affair. For all of the Internet's wonders, it is also difficult to manage and more fragile with each passing day. Add this article to Del.icio.us Article URL: http://www.technologyreview.com/infotech/wtr_16051,258,p1.html Read 235 more articles from Technology Review Magazine sorted by date, popularity, or title. Next Article: Thinking Outside the Grid          Books about Usability | Information Architecture | Information Visualisation | Technology History This site is a labour of love built by Chris McEvoy

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