21 Always will be?

I agree with everything you say, except for the the web will “always” be about text part. I think it’s a bit limiting. I also have a few photographer friends that might argue that the web currently isn’t only about words. But still, your words are breath of fresh air. My company has been screaming this for years, “Content is king!”

When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

posted at 07:05 pm on November 7, 2003 by Nicholas Tolson

22 Cannot agree with everything

Guys, what you say is good. However it’s too difficult to get a useful site to work if you don’t have a nice design.

Content is important, true. However would Yahoo! be successful if it was a textual black & white site? I don’t think so. Not now at least.

I think the right approach is to deliver content AND wrap it with a good design. In today’s reality it’s both stupid to deliver design without the content and the content without a bit of design.

Keep up the good work! Triple issues rule.

posted at 07:39 pm on November 7, 2003 by Alexander Savenkov

23 LOL

That was fuckin’ funny. I love it.

posted at 09:38 pm on November 7, 2003 by Ray

24 Ironic

A nice irony in “A webmaster”‘s words considering Nick Usborne’s own words in his book “Networds”
ie. “It is the online environment’s sensitivity to voice and tone that dictates the enormous care you must take with the way in which you write.”
Still, it’s nice to come across some unalloyed enthusiasm.

Cheers

posted at 04:09 am on November 8, 2003 by Jon Harris

25 missed the leading edge

Some good points, but … 1988?? By then I’d gone cold-turkey on Usenet \twice/ after following just two groups (none of them the above-named) grew to a >1-hour-a-day habit.

posted at 07:33 am on November 8, 2003 by Chip Hitchcock

26 Touche

I agree that many people have failed to include pre-eminent amounts of “words” on the web. But isn’t the web much more than that? The web is an ever epanding resource for photographs, music, and video, not just an online newspaper. However, I can’t recall the last time I read an article as interesting as a Dumb Sack of Hammers! Touche my friend!

posted at 08:27 am on November 8, 2003 by mpensworth

27 Fantastic article

Absolutely agree with the article.

We, ALA’s readers, are usually on the wrong side of your equation. We are the people going home shaking our heads: “programmers, designers, and usability engineers”.

But you’re right. I’ve been trying to explain to clients that what really matters is:

1. Relevant content
2. Up to date content

I don’t think your article implies, in any way, that we the “go-homers” are irrelevant.

posted at 09:11 am on November 8, 2003 by manuel razzari

28 Unreadable fluff

I found it unreadable fluff. Bad writing, zero content. Was it meant to be ironic?

posted at 10:39 am on November 8, 2003 by Joel Biroco

29 The Future

I agree: content is a driving force.

I disagree: “their experience of the web is about words, the text. Always has been. Always will be.”

Yet images and colors can also create experience. Why do people spend hours looking at paintings in museums? Because shapes and colors can say as much, and sometimes even more, than words ever could. There is more to the human experience than words and content, but content rules the web today, only because the web is limited in its potential. Look to the future, look to the ‘metaverse’.

The future of the web is ‘full immersion’. The ability to connect analog with digital, electro-chemical with electrical, the human brain with machine. The future of the web is a new reality unto itself, and in this ‘metaverse’, people will be able to experience more than words. They will only be limited by their senses and imagination, and when such a time comes, text will be only one of many modes of communication and experience.

Therefore I disagree. Text will not always be the sole experience of the web.

Yet this story was well written and enjoyable to read. Thank you for the text-based experience.

posted at 10:45 am on November 8, 2003 by John W.

30 Thief!

I want my 5 minutes back!

posted at 11:45 am on November 8, 2003 by Jogh