Re: Publishing on WWW Re: Publishing on WWWThe question here is publishing what? I agree that 95% of basic book stuff
is reproducible in HTML. In addition, you get multimedia in an HTML
book that you won't get in a regular book. The only glaring flaw at
the moment is the lack of tables in current browsers. (Note Xmosaic
2.5b2 does have some table stuff - still green yet, and the Mac version
is also promising tables in the final release of 2.0) I don't
think that I will need to wait that long.
However, publishing is more than just distributing data. At present
WWW is a good document distribution system, it is NOT a good document
publishing system. Why? Because publishing involves more than the
distribution and layout of words. Publishing is distributing
intellectual property. What we may take for granted now in the
printed medium is that reproduction is only moderatly easy, and
the words stay together. On the web, words can be reproduced with
a click and drag. Words can be modified by any who can type. And
the derivative work can be distributed globally.
It is best to think of books as hardware and online publishing as
software. Several methods have been used to control software
distribution, including locking or protecting it, creating
frequent revisions, and making the software obtuse with out
documentation. Locking online documents is one option, but it
should have similar results to software protection. Frequent
revisions of online documents are probably not going to be
that common. And creating documentation for documents is a farce.
So where does this leave us? Someone should take a look at the
Business Opportunity section of newspapers, and magazines. There
are people that are selling 400 reports (ie how to clean up credit,
how to get in on government auctions...) for $.10 a piece wholesale
and then reselling each report for $2-$10 retail. There are people
that sell groups of 35 reports for each topic (health, business...)
that you can purchase, edit and distribute in a newsletter. You cannot
resell these reports to others for the same purpose.
Vast quantities of data (not information) will be produced. The Internet
will be overwhelmed with data. The big industry then will be the information
producers that wade through the oceans of data and produce customized
information. No longer will we all read the same article in
Newsweek. The stupid dog on AT&T's commercial is only the begining.
The future is in customized information, just like we customize
cars and houses and contact lenses now.
Mary