Welcome to the February 2006 issue of ZooNews, Zoonini Web Services' monthly newsletter.

Stepping Back

After delving into the detail-heavy world of search-engine optimization over the last few months, this issue I'd like to step back for a moment and take a wider view of the Web.

Following a recent trip to Toronto during which I met with several Web clients, it dawned on me that almost exactly a decade ago I'd attended a conference, also in Toronto, called Interactive '96. The event, co-hosted by the Canadian Film Centre, Apple Canada and York University, explored with much fanfare the burgeoning opportunities presented by "new" media like CD-ROMs and the even-newer World Wide Web.

I was covering the conference for POV Magazine, a Canadian film and television publication, and thought it would be fun to reprint my pre-dot-com-boom-era article. When I realized that this month is the 10th issue of ZooNews, the decision was cemented – looking back at the Web's potential as it appeared 10 years ago to mark 10 months of ZooNews seems fitting. So without further ado, sit back and enjoy:

Interactive '96: The State of the WWW

by Kathryn Presner, originally published in POV Magazine: The art and business of independent film and video, Spring 1996 issue

It's hard to believe that as recently as two years ago, the Internet to most people meant newsgroups and e-mail. More adventurous pioneers on the cyber frontier enthusiastically touted the virtues of IRCs, Gophers, MOOs, MUDs, and other such fare. (Apologies to the acronymically-challenged.)

Today, the hottest place to be on the Net is the "Web". That's the World Wide Web, or WWW, for anyone who's managed to stay hidden away from any form of media during the last year. From massive corporations like the Royal Bank (who hire professional "Webmasters" to do the technical work), to the teenager next door who teaches herself the basics of HTML programming to make a "personal" Home Page – it seems as if everybody has, or aspires to have, a Web site. Hell, both my 23 year-old brother and my mother have their own Web pages.

At Interactive '96, much of the conference excitement was generated by discussion about the World Wide Web. While speakers in the CD-ROM-related sessions decried the lack of shelf space for a wider variety of multimedia products and the fact that the bulk of CD-ROM revenues were concentrated in the hands of a few mass-market producers, most of those in the Web-related sessions sang its praises highly as a unique creative medium.

One Web champion is Adrienne Wortzel, university teacher and artist from New York. She spoke at the "Life on the World Wide Web" panel, lauding the Web as a place for artists - both traditional and digital (she is both) – to share their work and to collaborate with colleagues around the world. Her own Web site is "The Electronic Chronicles," a spoofy mid-90s time capsule discovered by archeologists from the Casaba Melon Institute sometime in the distant future. As Wortzel's bio puts it, her piece was made possible by the Web, "an electronic medium which offers a non-hierarchical, non-linear, non-possessive, and pluralistic environment in which to develop narrative."

Isabel Hoffmann, president and CEO of Hoffmann + Associates, a Toronto consulting firm, put it in less academic terms during her energetic morning speech to Interactive '96 participants. What makes the Web exciting, she said, is that:

• it offers a venue for a variety of content creators;
• it provides equal access to markets and audiences;
• it bypasses the middlemen;
• due credit and recognition can be given;
• no multinational will own it; and
• it can function as a true democratizer.

Notice there is no mention of revenue potential here. What Hoffmann, Wortzel and others seemed to be saying is that the value of the Web is as a free-flowing international hub of creativity, where no one is boss, and everyone can have their say.

(With regard to due credit, apparently, many CD-ROM publishers do not give credit to those whose work went into creating the final product. What book publisher, Hoffmann said, would put out a book and not credit its author? On the Web, this is not the norm.)

Another issue raised during one of the panel discussions is the fact that appropriation of others' work (text, graphics) is so easy on the Web. One cut-and-paste and someone else's painstakingly-created image can be dropped right into your own work, HTML code and all - call it digital plagiarism.

But certain forms of "borrowing" are accepted, even encouraged, in Web culture. According to some, like Toronto's Cattle.Ken, who calls himself a "cyberspace architect," if you fear your work might be stolen when you put it on the Web, don't do it.

This "what's yours is mine, what's mine is yours" attitude upsets some people, and copyright notices still appear on certain Web pages, particularly the official corporate ones. Not surprising, considering these are the places where the real money is changing hands.

There was also talk at several sessions about the current technical limitations of the Web: the lack of instant video or audio playback (for the most part, these must still be downloaded and played separately) and the slowness of images and other graphics to appear on screen.

Some, like digital media producer Peter Girardi of The Voyager Company, a high-end New York CD-ROM publisher, think that "the Web is a lot of hype."

Is the World Wide Web just another fad, destined to lose its hipness once it's overrun with digital "suits" from the big conglomerates? Maybe. But for now, it's an exciting place to be. See you online.

Flash Forward

When I wrote this piece 10 years ago, I don't think I could have predicted what an important cultural, economic and social position the Web would hold a mere decade later. It would have been impossible to foresee my own career shift from film and television production to Web design a few years later!

In 1996, I doubt that all but the most visionary would have predicted that:

• people would be downloading entire television shows and feature films in less time than it takes to actually watch them
• the blog movement would give everyone the irresistible opportunity to confess their deepest secrets to the entire world
• companies would hire firms to scour online message boards, blogs and newsgroups for mentions of their products and services
• tiny, addictive devices would allow people to send and receive email while waiting in line, riding the bus, or going to the bathroom
• people would routinely find jobs, houses, lovers, and spouses on the Web
• a business without a Web site would be almost unheard of
• teens wouldn't remember a time before email, multi-player online 3D video games, and real-time chat programs
• it would be possible to listen to thousands of songs in high-quality digital format without ever owning a CD
• businesses could exist and succeed entirely on the Web
• people around the world could talk to each other without long distance fees or even a telephone
• Flash animation would revolutionize the cartoon industry
• e-commerce (a term first coined in 1996) would become the economic phenomenon it is today
  

We will return to our usual format next issue... in the meantime, if you're inspired to do so, send me a note telling me what surprises you about how you use the Web today. And how do you think you'll be using the Web – and other new technologies – 10 years from now? I'll share some of your thoughts in the next issue.

À la prochaine,

kp
aka Kathryn Presner