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This column originally appeared in the American Philatelic Society's monthly magazine, "The American Philatelist." Since then some of the information may be out-of-date depending on how far back you're reading.
January 2000
Janus welcomes you to January y2k. The old Roman god looked around to both the past and future to take stock and plan ahead, and this New Years may very well have been the biggest look around since A.D. 1000. I hope you liked what you saw.
Though my crystal ball and hindsight are rather myopic, I daresay that one year is quite like the next. It's only over time that we change and never by dates.
In fact I don't think we've changed at all since last issue, but now that all the hoopla has been carted off to the landfill, let's see what changes are in store for us.
On the Web it's 1961.
In November eBay blocked AuctionWatch's servers from searching eBay's auction listings in a move destined to launch a series of measures and counter-measures, suit and counter-suit.
AuctionWatch is an "aggregator," a site that compiles user-requested info from many other sites and presents them on one screen for easier evaluation, just like any search engine. But eBay claimed that aggregators need a license from eBay to display their listings.
Whatever the lawyers and techno-sleuths come up with, this is another warning that the initial concept of the Web is dying. The free exchange of information is what the Web was all about. I use the past tense because it's not what it's generally all about now.
Tim Berners-Lee, who created the Web in '89, intended it to be a powerful force for social change and individual creativity. He actually gave it away for free and by 1991 universities, students and researchers were addicted.
In December '94 Netscape Navigator was born. Then in '95 AOL began billing by the month rather than by the hour, and Microsoft released Windows 95 and Internet Explorer.
By 1996 aggressive corporations were taking interest in the Web, and by 1999 the proprietary Web Wars were well underway. But now the free exchange of information may very well be legislated or judged secondary to commercial concerns.
Most of the largest Web sites are now clones of themselves, carrying the same syndicated information, varying only in name and color schemes and guided by a marketing plan to exploit their niche. They're somelike like a school of sharks circling around the pot of gold, and as Yogi Berra once said, "It's deja vu, all over again."
Back in 1961 the then-head of the F.C.C., Newton Minow, scathingly called TV the "vast wasteland." Back then TV leadership had passed from the pioneer innovators to the corporation's financial officers, who saw the huge TV audiences only in terms of lucrative markets.
Those wanting to enlighten, clarify or help the audience through TV programming were sent to public broadcasting, and now a two-tier Web is looming ahead.
The top tier will have a handful of URLs of billion dollar networks endlessly cross-licensing, selling, promoting and quoting each other, intergrating Web, film, books, commerce, TV and politics, and moving from one promotable event to the next, while millions on the rest of the Web struggle to be heard.
The danger is that unless people help change the trend, important messages about education, free speech, children, poverty, human rights and health won't be heard, and what once was an alternative to TV infotainment might wind up as the biggest ratings winner of them all.
Compare this site to the one mentioned at the very end of this column.
Weaving the Web
Time magazine called him one of the 100 greatest minds of the 20th century, and his invention changed the world. Englishman Tim Berners-Lee was at the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Switzerland when he invented the "World Wide Web" and the first browser.
His new book, "Weaving the Web," is the story of how and why he developed the Web and where it could take us. In it he explains his views on censorship, privacy, the power of software companies and reveals there's much work to be done and that the full impact of the Web has yet to be realized.
Berners-Lee graduated Oxford University and now holds the 3Com Founders chair at MIT. He also directs the World Wide Web Consortium whose mission is to help the Web reach its full potential.
Berners-Lee's view is that programmers, businesses and social organizations must work together to strike a balance between the commercial and social forces on the Web.
"Weaving the Web"
http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee-Bio.html/Weaving/Overview.html
