Put Weblogs To Work
This is an interesting piece from MacWorld by Scot Hacker. It's an interesting perspective on blogging, and the excerpt below pretty much hits the nail on the head re. the real potential of the Web.
With no paper, printing, or distribution costs, the Internet has eliminated many of the financial barriers to publishing. Whether you're a CEO, a scientist, or simply someone with an opinion, the Web offers you unprecedented access to an audience, as well as the ability to provide up-to-the-minute news. That's assuming, of course, that you have the time and technical skills to constantly update and maintain a growing Web site and online community.
But now even these barriers are disappearing, thanks to the rising popularity of Weblog systems, publishing tools that let you post daily -- or even hourly -- Web content without writing a lick of HTML.
The position espoused above is pretty much what the real potential of the Web is all about. It is about empowerment, freedom of expression, without the prohibitive cost of conventional publishing outlet developement.
Funnily enough the first coming of the Web (I will write about this in more detail in a future post) didn't really do much for individual empowerment, if anything it mangled the vision; you had to possess graphic design skills to do the simplest of things becuse the perception that site beauty superceded content quality.
To quote Jon Udell from last years InfoWorld Innovator's award piece on Dave Winer (one of the honorees):
"The Web was meant to be a medium for sharing written communication, but things didn't turn out that way at first. In Manila and now in Radio, Winer has been steadily reducing the complexity of Web publishing."
Dave Winer added this quote:
"In 1999 we got the number of steps required to publish Web content down from 18 to three," Winer recalls. "Now we're at zero steps. Just save a file and you're done."
Zero Steps, basically signify that the chasm between the old web and the new web has finally been bridged (at least technology wise).