Times are changing
09/01/06 23:43 |
Permalink
Well, it's taken 10 years for a situation whereby an
individual can spend the same as a bottle of
champagne to create a website and keep it up to date
with as little effort as it takes to write an email.
In 1992, the internet was a closed shop to those outside the US. It was for Universities. It was full of bolt-on bits such as WAIS, GOPHER, TelNet and bang paths which managed to exclude mere mortals.
I joined the online community in 1991 with AppleLink (run by GE at the time). It offered limited discussion groups and slow downloads (2.4 kbits per second). It cost £34 per hour on top of your telephone charges (£3 to £8 per hour), but because of the slowness of modems, a 5 Mb download (that's an iTunes track) could take 4 hours to complete. If it went wrong (it did, often) you had to start again. On the plus side, you could talk to the people who invented the tools you used in your job, and gain tweaks and insights that made your work gain 'the edge'.
So I migrated to CompuServe in 1992. It cost a bit less, and offered a better interface, more people, wider discussions, and the first inkling of (egad!) a recreational use of online discussion.
However, by 1993, the internet was on the scene. The worldwide web was given about a page in a 400 page tome about the internet - Mosaic was an interesting example of integrating text, images and hyperlinks together. Like the ultimate indexer, you could create a page and refer to other pages whilst reading it. It all sounded just like the seminal BBC documentary 'Hyperland' - with its nods to Ted Nelson's Xanadu - but without the wolfpack instinct of CompuServe, AOL and Prodigy (the main players of the time). I started investigating and found it based on the 'Thrift' view of the world.
By 1994, Apple had started 'AppleLink 2 - eWorld' - which only proved how wrong the arguments were for closed systems. All the online players required custom software, special phone numbers and so on. The internet was open - there was a choice of 'access providers' who merely got you connected. After that, they had no involvement in content - a good thing (tm).
So the web (a tiny part of the internet then, but now 99.97% of it) is here. But how do you be a part of it? Everyone has a website - how does one prevent it from being a cobweb site?
Finally RapidWeaver is making it simple for individuals to capture their contributions, organise (and edit) them, and publish with a one button click.
Maybe sites like this are worthless to the community at large, but if the search engines find it, and people are looking for it, the internet is doing what it should do - connect people for the common good.
In 1992, the internet was a closed shop to those outside the US. It was for Universities. It was full of bolt-on bits such as WAIS, GOPHER, TelNet and bang paths which managed to exclude mere mortals.
I joined the online community in 1991 with AppleLink (run by GE at the time). It offered limited discussion groups and slow downloads (2.4 kbits per second). It cost £34 per hour on top of your telephone charges (£3 to £8 per hour), but because of the slowness of modems, a 5 Mb download (that's an iTunes track) could take 4 hours to complete. If it went wrong (it did, often) you had to start again. On the plus side, you could talk to the people who invented the tools you used in your job, and gain tweaks and insights that made your work gain 'the edge'.
So I migrated to CompuServe in 1992. It cost a bit less, and offered a better interface, more people, wider discussions, and the first inkling of (egad!) a recreational use of online discussion.
However, by 1993, the internet was on the scene. The worldwide web was given about a page in a 400 page tome about the internet - Mosaic was an interesting example of integrating text, images and hyperlinks together. Like the ultimate indexer, you could create a page and refer to other pages whilst reading it. It all sounded just like the seminal BBC documentary 'Hyperland' - with its nods to Ted Nelson's Xanadu - but without the wolfpack instinct of CompuServe, AOL and Prodigy (the main players of the time). I started investigating and found it based on the 'Thrift' view of the world.
By 1994, Apple had started 'AppleLink 2 - eWorld' - which only proved how wrong the arguments were for closed systems. All the online players required custom software, special phone numbers and so on. The internet was open - there was a choice of 'access providers' who merely got you connected. After that, they had no involvement in content - a good thing (tm).
So the web (a tiny part of the internet then, but now 99.97% of it) is here. But how do you be a part of it? Everyone has a website - how does one prevent it from being a cobweb site?
Finally RapidWeaver is making it simple for individuals to capture their contributions, organise (and edit) them, and publish with a one button click.
Maybe sites like this are worthless to the community at large, but if the search engines find it, and people are looking for it, the internet is doing what it should do - connect people for the common good.