You cant expect everyone to use text. The problem is that instead
of having 2 mediums: One for information, and one for general
"fun surfing" (Gopher and WWW?), they were both merged into one.
That was logical, from a commercial aspect.
That was illogical from the researcher aspect. :P
The internet changes its face with the systems that control it.
At first it was the universaties, so it was all gopher, ftp, and
some www sites - The focus was info. When the commercial arena
arrived, it lifted the internet really high. Unfortunatly, the internet
had to change its face from a mostly information resource to a
commercial resource. "Commercial" as in the ability to provide
commercial services. And ofcourse, commercial services that are
provided by "real world" companies require to be attractive, to get
as many costumers over the other opponents. This is a race, and
the horse is called "public visibility".
The thing that go hurt almost immidiatly, ofcourse, it the information
resource. Since now the information is only "a secondry goal",
unless the information is the goal of the specific commercial service
being served, it is no longer being supported as much as it was
in the past. This is why its now hard to use your common Gopher
client or text-based browser to fetch info just plain and simply -
its because if you are not using the internet for 'services',
you arent really using it for what is now, unfortunatly, its 'true'
purpose.
(Note: dont flame me. I'm not for this. I'm just trying to say how
I think the state of the internet is currently. And just to make this
clear: I hate this state just as well as you.)
Now, here's something intresting: Nearly all the "dot com" companies
have been almost totally crashed. The 'dream' is over, or etleast
entered a long winter sleep. My guess is that the internet is going
to change its face again. Commercial services are still going to
play a big part in it, thats no doubt. But I dont think that its
going to be as before... since the dot com buisness is starting to
loose the huge influence it had so far, I think that a rather 'new'
power is going to take atleast a piece of the helm.
I call it "The Open Source community", but I dont really refer
to open source software. Basicly i'm talking about services that
will be provided for free, or a small charge, yet still not commercial
in nature. The best old and existing example I can think of is
the IRC networks: They are there. We dont pay them, and infact - no
one does. They are there because of the good will of their operators.
Its a public service from the public, to the public. Basicly I think
that etleast part of the internet is now going to go on in this
direction - You could say that the internet is going back to the hands
of its users. It never really left our control - we've just let it
slip abit. :)
Dont you think so?
