Offline Rich Internet Applications

Alex Iskold has a provocative piece over at Read/Write Web in which he claims that adding offline storage to Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) might be irrelevant because, soon, we will all always be connected to the Internet.  Just to be clear, an example of a Rich Internet Application is Gmail, Google's highly interactive web-based email service.  Going offline in this context would mean being able to use Gmail to read downloaded emails and compose new messages when not connected to the Internet, something people who use email programs like Outlook do all the time.

The idea that one would be constantly connected to the Internet is simply preposterous on its face.  Further, there are various versions of being connected to the Internet, a whole class of which downgrade the interactivity of RIAs to the point of being unusable.  Take my recent trip to China as an example.  We had the following blocks to RIAs or just plain web applications that dramatically altered our ability to use the Internet even though we were only officially disconnected for less than two days:

• The Great Firewall of China:  Blocks Google Groups, if as with new groups, you need to click OK to potential adult content.  We had been using a Google group to manage our group.  It also blocked EMU's web mail client.  We moved all communication to paper.
  
• The constricted data pipe going into many Chinese locations: Brings the rich interactivity of RIAs to an almost complete standstill.  Suddenly the bright idea of only loading functionality as needed to increase responsiveness makes the whole experience run at a snail's pace because the data pipe to bring that functionality in is full.

Of course, these two items raise the question of whether you should depend on web based applications at all, not just Rich Internet Applications.  BTW, I do use RIAs all the time but have found I can only depend on them for work flow in fairly circumscribed circumstances.  My general opinion is that many US commenters are living in a well-powered Internet bubble, mainly enabled in the United States, and missing the big picture.