It sometimes seems like time is not this linear path disappearing into the distance, but a circle that is bound to repeat itself. This is certainly true of fashion. A shirt going out of style now might be all the rage again in twenty years.
And it seems like the world of computing isn't immune to this circle of time. When looking into the future of web applications, it is easy to see how it is merging with the past.
Terminal-Mainframe Computing
The first mainframes were introduced in the late 50's, and they were a dominant source of computing through the 60's and 70's. The market for mainframes began to shrink in the 80's, and by the early 90's, it looked like they would die out. But the explosion of the web brought a new use for mainframes as large corporations looked for ways to account for the high volume of transactions brought through the web.
The terminal-mainframe model is a simple one: the mainframe does all the work, and then sends the text to the terminal. The terminal's sole task was to accept the text and display it to the user.
The Rise of Personal Computers and Client-Server Computing
As the price of personal computers dropped, and their processing power rose, PCs shoved terminals to the curb. The personal computer allowed the user to run their own applications, such as word processors and spreadsheets, and connect to others through a network. The popularity of the PC in the workplace led to the client-server architecture.
The client-server model is similar to the mainframe model. The server acts as a warehouse storing the data, and frequently takes on a share of the work in manipulating that data. But some of the burden is also placed on the client. For example, the server might tell the client the cost of an item and how many were ordered, but leave it to the client to multiply those together to get the total.
The rise of multimedia cemented the place of PCs in the business world. The ability to perform tasks requiring high end graphics and sound gave them a distinct edge over the old terminals that generally displayed everything in a very ugly green text.
Web Applications and the Operating System of the Future
Looking to the future, we can see a world in which web applications replace many of the tasks that are the domain of PCs. In time, businesses may decide renting an office suite from a web site to provide word processors and spreadsheets to users is more cost-effective than purchasing the office suite and installing it on each individual computer.
As web applications become more sophisticated, they become better equipped to handle the day-to-day tasks of the end user. The selling point for businesses is a decrease in support costs. Web applications eliminate the need to install software on the client, to routinely upgrade the software on the client, and to maintain the client's operating system. A web application can run on a Mac or a PC, on Internet Explorer or Firefox, thus creating an independence that reduces support costs.
In many ways, the web is acting like the operating system, while the web browser is acting like very sophisticated versions of the old terminals. This creates an architecture similar to the old terminal-mainframe model.
And so it seems that we have come full circle, only this time we don't have to look at that ugly green text that terminals were known for since web browsers are quite capable of high quality sound and video.
