Some opinions of this Web Authoring Experience
You've got to be kidding me! The web is going to take over the world of publishing? Maybe in Silicon Valley, where bored tech writers were looking for something to do with their spare time, but we're a long way off from the mere mortal experience. We're on a different planet. Earth to Scotty...
First, anything you, as a mere mortal, can produce with a tool such as, say, Netscape Navigator Gold, will look woefully unprofessional. It wasn't until confronted with the problem of putting up a web front so that people would stop complaining we didn't have one (wait--- do I hear "self-fulfilling market" here?) that I realized an initial uniquely web behavior. I had always wondered why people put out a list of their favorite sites and links. I mean, why do I care if you like to visit the Small Furry Rodents Home Page? Put up some content of your own! Publish, for yougn man! Don't just sit there putting link after link after link, filling up the lycos and infoseek with webpages that have nothing to add.
That was my attitude until I sat down with the State of the Art publishing tool, Navigator Gold, to create our home page. Now I understand. Publishing is a royal pain. Nobody wants to read a web page full of text with the occasional vertical line or small image. Nobody wants to read. In fact, I'll be surprised if anyone in the entire world gets to this point in this page. Mail me if you do.
So will the web grow up into the new publishing metaphor for humanity, providing a democratic voice for all? Possibly the opposite. If our multimedia world creates fewer and fewer readers who are willing to pour through boring text for the content of thought, and instead creates a stronger appetite for the visual, the graphic... then fewer and fewer people will be able to publish content that is read or even noticed. Yesterday we read papers. We read documents, opinions, letters. Tomorrow, what will we listen to on the web? More of the visual, television media our new generation has grown up with. Media that can be consumed, but not easily produced. And published by mere mortals? You be the judge...
Just some thoughts at the end of the day. Have some yourself?