April 24, 2000– Newsletter #77

Greetings, Weekend Silicon Warriors,

Could telecommuting be the answer to air pollution? There’s
a movement afoot in some states with poor air quality to
push the issue of telecommuting. Cool! You can force me to
work from home anytime you want. But don’t jump for joy yet.
A business manager says she requires her telecommuters to do
more work than her in-house people, by as much as ten percent.
OK, maybe I’ll get up and come into the office after all…

U.S. consumers are responsible for over half of all purchases
made on the Web. So the way we do it must be how everyone does
it, by credit card, right? Nope. A study finds that the method
of online payment varies with the banking system of a particular
country. Other preferred methods, in order of popularity, are
direct bank drafts, cash-on-delivery, and bank transfers.

Dig this court ruling: in September 1998, hackers attacked the
Pentagon. The people at the Pentagon retaliated with a program
of their own. That’s an eye for an eye, except the court’s
decision was that the retaliation was an attack in itself. So,
bottom line, if someone attacks your system, don’t fight back,
or you’re just as guilty as they are, and they can sue you! Ugh.

Now on to today’s topic…

Who among you believes that the Internet will become the
dominant media of our culture? Let’s see a show of hands. OK.
Who among you believes that the Internet will become so
prevalent that other forms of media, like newspapers, will
perish?

This is a topic I enjoy getting into with students. The
generation of students I’m teaching now came in on the cusp
of the Web’s explosion. In five years, I’m sure the number
of hands that pop up for the second question will increase.

But do we really believe that the Internet, mainly the Web,
will become so encompassing that it will overtake newspapers,
television, radio, and magazines? I remember reading an
article, not too long ago, that suggested that soon television
would become totally obsolete. It would be replaced by the
computer, which would be the one “box” allowing media entry
into the home. In addition to connecting to the Internet, it
would provide on-demand television programs, radio station
feeds from all around the country, and access to newspapers
and magazines whenever the user wanted it.

And police will soon begin using two-way wrist radios like
Dick Tracy.

Sorry for the smart tone, but I just can’t buy the idea of
the Web eliminating print and broadcast media altogether.
That one article isn’t the only one predicting that traditional
media will perish. AOL president Bob Pittman addressed some
newspaper editors recently and told them that their future
is online. The implication was that they either go cyber, or
die.

Pittman said that print versions of newspapers still dominate,
but went on to say that their days are numbered. He thinks
that print’s reign over Web-version newspapers has only 10 to
15 years until the situation is reversed.

Does he know that in the deal with Time Warner he bought a
bunch of newspapers?

My guess is that Pittman feels somewhat the same as I do
regarding the upcoming generation. The kids I am teaching
now can remember when there was no World Wide Web. In 15
years there will be a whole new generation of students who
can’t recall a time when they couldn’t jump online. Will
future generations abandon print media altogether?

All right, let’s say that the print naysayers are correct.
It is now 15 years down the line and print media is just
about dead. Newspapers have all gone online. The paperboy
or girl is a thing of the past.

How great this will be! Now we can choose our own sources
of information. We can search out only the stories we want
to read. We can have a computer perform searches overnight,
and there in the morning will be only stories on topics we
requested.

There it is, waiting patiently for you to move the mouse to
kill the screen saver: your morning cyber-paper. You can sit
down and read just what you want to read.

Is this good? What if you’d like to go to another room? What
if you’d like to do the Jumble or the crossword puzzle on
your way to work? You’d need to print out the page or put
the files on the laptop. Now we’re back to carrying something
around.

What about your decisions regarding what will be on that
printed page? My guess is that you’d only choose those areas
and topics that interest you: national headlines, a certain
team’s scores, maybe a comic or two, or some stock information.

Would you download the minutes from last night’s city council
meeting? My students looked at me like I had a second head
when I asked them that question. They laughed and said of
course not; that’s boring. I asked them about getting the
minutes of the local water board’s meeting. Maybe they were
voting on a cost increase, and wanted input from residents
regarding the amount. Would you download it then?

“If I knew about it,” one student said.

That’s my concern. How would you know about it? If you were
in charge of picking what you want in advance, and you find
a topic boring, you might not allow it to get through to you.
Your taxes, your water bill, and your electric bill went up,
and you didn’t have a clue that you could have acted against
it.

What about differing views? Let’s say you’re a Republican.
Would you only want to get news from publications that write
in the political bent you agree with? If so, is that good?
Wouldn’t it be useful to at least have access to differing
viewpoints, or a different take on a topic? Or is constant
verification of your beliefs the only thing you want?

OK, it’s time to go to work, if you still actually leave your
home to work. You’re riding the train and you want to do the
crossword puzzle. Well, now you have to print it out, or
download it onto a laptop for the trip. You’re back to hauling
things around again.

If my quick version of a computer-only future is even somewhat
accurate, it seems like a whale of a lot of work. You have to
set up programs and print things out, whereas before you could
have simply paid that kid to throw your paper into your bushes
every morning.

Will the Internet obliterate print media? I highly doubt it.
Will we get rid of our television sets and radios? Ditto.
The Web will just be yet another place to get information and
entertainment. That’s about it. Oh, yes, it’ll make a dent
in the current media formats. It’s doing that now. But will
it kill them altogether? I just can’t see it.

I actually like the concept of a newspaper. I like a group
of people who will go to the water board and city council
meetings. I like to know there is a watchdog that will
quickly tell me about the things I might find boring, but
still might affect my wallet and me. I like seeing pictures
of newly engaged couples, and viewpoints that anger me. I
like hitting the headlines and only reading what interests
me. I blow through my local paper in 20 minutes, but in that
time I get to see information I wouldn’t normally seek out
by myself.

But can’t I get all that on the Web? I guess so, but left to
my own devices, I might not get as much of it, and I might
very well be left out of the loop on many things. I think I’d
be cocooning myself, rather than staying open to all news. As
Jack Cox of the Foundation for American Communications said,
“If people are only getting the news they want, they lose the
[sense of] community and it hurts democracy.”

So we’ll make a point of having the computer get us all the
news that would be relevant to us. It will grab all the
national and international headlines, all the local stuff,
and all the city and state news, sports scores, and
financial information.

Or we could just buy a paper.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

That’s that. I’m off to dinner and a show. I’m actually
writing this sitting in a hotel room in Gulfport, Minnesota.
My school is on spring break, so I am too. My wife is getting
one of those all-day spa treatments so I’ve got a few hours
to myself. Believe it or not, this is what I choose to do.
Ugh! I must seek out a life.

Joe Burns, Ph.D.

And Remember: The computer language PERL was almost named
“Gloria” after the wife of the author, Larry Wall.