The Web Is , Too, Fun!
Last week, I got a call from a New York Times reporter who wanted to interview me about the Web from my perspective as a long-time user. She was also looking for my old friend Glenn Davis. Well, I had a family emergency and didn't manage the interview, but Lisa Guernsey did reach Glenn and a few other follks and wrote a piece essentially saying "The Web isn't fun any more."
Here's the article she wrote.
It's probably just as well she didn't catch up with me. I'd have spoiled her story. See, I think the Web is fun. It's just not the quirky kind of fun she and Glenn seemed to identify as being the primary raison d'etre of the Web. I'm probably just weird (very little doubt of that, actually) but I never did find it "fun" to watch a coffee pot or a fish tank.
From the beginning, I've seen the Web as a sort of knowledge-adventure game. Finding cool ideas, insights, factoids, and other infotrinkets has been a passion of mine. It still is.
In reacting to her piece, Dave Winer of Scripting News fame wrote, in part: "Glenn Davis says that the gee-whiz hello-world days are over. It's true it was fun (for a few minutes) to watch a fish tank on a webcam. But that was not the promise or purpose of the Web. Maybe Davis thought that's what it was. If so, he missed the point. It's about publishing without the middlemen."
Exactly. But I continue to advocate -- even agitate for -- a clearer understanding of this new-era publishing model with a shift to a far more collaborative approach.
Radio makes it possible for virtually anyone to publish on the Web. Now we just need to make it more feasible for people who don't want to publish their own sites to become participants and collaborators with those who do wish to do so. If you have a Web log, I encourage you to find a way to open it to discussion from your readers, most of whom probably don't have Web logs and never will. If you don't have a Web log, get Radio and start one! It's not that hard!
Do you agree? Or am I missing something here? Join a discussion about this topic on my personal Web site.
10:50:45 AM 
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