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Web No Longer Eclectic?
khog writes: "The Sunday New York Times had a front-page article entitled, "Exploration of World Wide Web Tilts From Eclectic to Mundane." The article says that "[t]he Web was supposed to subvert corporate domination of culture by giving a global soapbox -- or printing press, or television station -- to anyone with a computer and a modem" and takes off from there. Was the Web ever "supposed to be" anything, much less a subversion of "corporate domination of culture?" Isn't the reduction of idle surfing and the increase of a "more direct, predetermined approach to the Web" just a "reflection" of an educated user base that knows what it wants?"
When I first started using the web, I followed almost every link I saw, used several bad search engines, and got nowhere. I'll admit that I found sites that I never would have otherwise found, but the waste of time getting there just wasn't worth it.
I think after the excitement of the web died down a bit, everyone realized how to use it, and now uses it much more efficiently. They don't go all over the place randomly; they go straight to what they want. If you are a new user to the web it still feels exciting and new. Sadly, most people aren't new users which isn't such a bad thing really.
"[t]he Web was supposed to subvert corporate domination of culture by giving a global soapbox -- or printing press, or television station -- to anyone with a computer and a modem" and takes off from there. Was the Web ever "supposed to be" anything, much less a subversion of "corporate domination of culture?"
Yes, I think that is how it was. Just look at the millions and millions of personal homepages, corporate and organization websites, blogs and everything you can think of. This is how it is, and I think that whether it was supposed to be this way or not, I can only see how this is good.
"Isn't the reduction of idle surfing and the increase of a "more direct, predetermined approach to the Web" just a "reflection" of an educated user base that knows what it wants?"
Yes, I believe that is true, but I think that it is not only a reflection of a user that knows what he/she wants and also knows how to get it. Perhaps people aren't that fascinated by surfing around randomly anymore, and they go to the websites they see being presented in the media. It is easier to go there directly than to search around only to grow tired of it.
Will work for bandwidth
I think this article is more a reflection of what's wrong with mainstream journalism these days.
Journalists defined the web as being designed to subvert corporate media, to give anyone a voice, to put them out of business. Is that really what developers had at NCSA had in mind? Is there a mainstream journalist who cares to research the facts in this or most other matters when there are commonly repeated mantras about what something is or is about? And then a few months later they get to write an article like this one, making their subject out to be a failure at obtaining the goals which they themselves invented.
Perhaps in something like this, reporting on the web, it doesn't really matter. But once you realize the level of ethics and research most journalists apply in reporting important happenings foreign and domestic, and that most americans do not seek out alternative sources of information.. It is rather scarey.
People keep saying "The Internet is supposed to be..." and then they fill in the blank with whatever they think most benefits them, and then whine when it turns out to be nothing more or less than a de-centralized network of networks instead of whatever miracle machine to which they personally feel somehow divinely entitled.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
The Internet promised to be the next generation platform for pornography and piracy. I can remember back in the mid-80s being able to download porn images (er...I mean a good friend told me they remember...). The Internet certainly has delivered on these promises.
I'd love to see a breakdown of total Internet bandwidth allocated to porn and piracy. I'd bet it consumes >90% of the total bandwidth used. Movies, music, and babes...now, if only they could figure out a way to download alcohol and drugs.
--Be human.
I've been a member of Everything2 since the days of Everything1. I have yet to find a more eclectic community there. E2 is the type of site that lets you just get lost in all the content, while allowing one-click transitions from the historical to the fantastic. While the editors weed out any nodes detrimental to the database, it is an example of how the world can create an enormous self-managed site.
For more information, click here.
Did you read the article? It didn't say that there wasn't a whole lot of eclectic stuff on the web. It only said that, by and large, most web users don't look at it. The "typical" Internet user is now someone who logs on, gets what they need from a few well-known sites, and logs off.
/. types.
You mean checks the NASCAR results and goes back to playing Redneck Rampage? This almost sounds like gamers being all up in arms that "Deer Hunter" was one of the top selling PC games in its time, but it's just another indicator that Joe Sixpack has a PC with a net connection now, and there are a helluva lot more Joe Sixpacks out there than
I doubt it. XML-RPC is semantically the same as RPC using Lisp expressions (and Lisp was invented 40 years ago). Sure any program can parse data, but it is making sense semantically of the data which is difficult, and even harder, interacting with another program.