IS THE WEB DOOMED?, CHARLES JAMISON

From: "Charles A. Jamison"

Library Director, Ursinus College

To: rrichter@acad.ursinus.edu

Subject: Is the Web doomed?

I've been thinking a lot about the World Wide Web lately. References to it seem to come at me from all directions, these days, from corn flake boxes, the TV, magazines and journals, candy wrappers, the sides of buses and the backs of taxi cabs...URLs seem to be *everywhere*!

Isn't it a bit weird to have the local TV news anchor person invite viewers (during the TV broadcast) to visit the station's Web page for the latest news and weather?

I can't really put my finger on why I feel this way, but there is a part of me that finds this distressing. Has "multimedia" made the difference? Is it the move away from text, to pictures, images, textured/colored backgrounds, sounds? [Is it] all these things [that are] contributing to the almost insane popularity of the Web?

I find that much of the "stuff" that surrounds words and ideas found on the Web just gets very much in the way. Much like the paper pages of _Wired_ magazine, where images and whatnot get juxtaposed and positioned under, over, around and in words.

What is the point of a background placed on a Web page that obscures the words that the author wishes to have "published?" I don't get it. Thank goodness painters do not always feel compelled to use all of the colors on the palette, just because the colors happen to be there.

Is the Web doomed, I wonder. Web page authoring tools are so powerful and prevalent now, and pages are being created at such a remarkable rate...how will the "organization" of this information continue to remain manageable? And if the search engines *can* keep up, who will have the time to wade through hundreds, if not thousands of hits from Web queries? I have never, in all my years as a librarian, and as an organizer of materials, seen an information retrieval system that cries out for some higher degree of subject indexing precision than the Web. Without a controlled vocabulary of some sort, how will things ever get better???

Those technical issues aside, I wonder about the Web's real potential as a "community builder." Will Howard Rheingold's site, "Electric Minds" really facilitate that move to the "social Web?" Having mentioned it, I feel compelled to provide the URL, so here it is: www.minds.com. There, after having complained about being bombarded with URLs, I cannot seem to send a message to you without including one!

Dave Barry calls the Web the "World Wide Wait," which is both funny and, unfortunately, often true. But that's another issue for another day.

-Charlie Jamison
Ursinus College

Mail Index

Return to THE PROGRAMME contents page.