What I think we will see are publishers which offer “permanent” archives for documents, which serve two purposes: 1) A long-lived URL for future reference, no matter what happens to the adminstrative and/or logistical infrastructure surrounding the original author/publisher. 2) A legal asset which is validated by its datestamp and submitter and thus stands as proof of exsistence for copyright and contractual reasons.
The computer hucksters have promoted a digital world which will not come to pass.
The places where computer labs are being built is where the music room and the art room used to be. Soon it will be where the gym used to be. In 20 years’ time we’ll have a country full of computer-literate people who will have lost touch with what’s important in society.
It is important to put the information provider in control of the question of pre-fetching permission. Hmm, after a little thought, it seems like an even smoother solution wold be to leave pre-fetching up to the server completely … It may be both a protocol and UI challenge to model the act of a server “throwing” unrequested content at a client…perhaps left for HTTP-NG?
[Traditional publishing and media companies] struggle to create formats that will lock others out of the market and reduce choices for consumers. Are these the industries we want to look at when we think to shape the commercial future of the Internet?
We’re expecting a boom in content providers who are starting to say, “People are on the Net. Let’s put stuff up and make money at it.” But this legislation scares them. They’re saying, “I could go to jail if someone thinks it’s indecent and I don’t even know what words I’m allowed to use.”
There is no controversy about what the online users look like … They’re demographically attractive, upscale, overeducated people. And the market is now moving into the mainstream – regular people are starting to come online. The Internet is clearly racing toward full-fledged status as a commercial medium.
It’s clear that the Net will be commercialized in one way or another. The choice we face is whether we adopt commercial models that reduce the Net’s vitality or ones that encourage it by providing incentives for even more of what it’s good at.
There has been a general shortage of expertise in networking. And we have to expect our sites to be less knowledgable in the future. So either the network breaks, or we make our system more robust.
To achieve more powerful user interfaces, HTML isn’t necessarily the only tool or even the best tool.