I used to spend hours every week in the public library, I also used to spend a fortune on books. My love for books continues but I no longer spend so much time in the library, or indeed so much money buying books. Some of my main interests are in areas of technology and we all know how fast technology is moving … so what’s the point of buying a book on a certain aspect of technology when by the time it is in print it is already long out of date. So I go to what my son calls the “BIG” bookshelf, the one that’s hidden behind my modem. There on the Internet I can find information about anything, especially technology, and it’s up to date! Often it is also interactive, more fun and generally it’s cheaper than books.
But hey! Wait! Look again, I think that the Internet is starting to return to the vision encouraged by its founders. I see more and more real in depth content, (and software), being offered, not cheaper, but for free, and is being funded by other means like the much maligned “affiliate advertising” programmes. Free is again becoming the byword of the Internet. My vision of the Internet being the ultimate repository of human intelligence and endeavor is again returning!
It’s getting to the point that if something costs on the site that I’m currently visiting, I search again, and I haven’t yet been disappointed, somewhere it is FREE, (unless of course it is a major software application like Windows, or AutoCAD, or 3D Studio or the like, or some hardware item.
Remember … the Internet is still in its infancy, 10 years ago virtually no one had heard of it, yet already there are reports that there are more than 3 billion individual web pages, the Search Engines are no longer coping .. it is said (and it’s not hard to imagine), that they cannot possibly index all of the information in those pages to any real degree of satisfaction, and it is little wonder that people have such a difficult task gaining the almost mythical top ten listings on them. Now they are starting to experiment with “pay to submit” engines. My feeling is that many site designers are discovering that the work involved in getting a high listing on the search engines just isn’t worth the effort, and they are getting more inventive about publicizing their web content. I also think that many people are starting to use search engines less and less as they discover more ways of finding the content that they are interested in, (this is due mainly to the way internet interest groups, newsletters and link exchange programmes have developed over the last couple of years). I think pay submission is a passing phase and I also think that for a Search Engine or Directory to survive another 10 years, while the internet grows at an ever increasing rate, it will have to change the way it works radically and it will have to be FREE
Education is another area that I am sure hasn’t “got the internet yet”, and I am quite sure that a lot of educators in true ostrich fashion, don’t want to “get the internet”. People everywhere are still paying a lot of money to “Be Educated”, yet I bet you can’t find one subject that is not represented well on the Internet, and I bet you’ll also find you can get it somewhere on the internet for FREE! Sometime real soon, people are going to “Get this fact” and the inevitable will happen. Education will change dramatically.
People are already becoming a lot more discerning, the initial WOW! value of the Internet is passed. People now expect value and they expect it FREE, and because so many people want it, and some are already prepared to give it, and everyone can access it, mark my words that’s the way it will be. So make sure your content is top quality, relevant and free, or visitors won’t come knocking.
Owen Lamb – Lecturer, Computer Aided Design and Architectural
Technologies. Special interests; Internet and Web Site Design.
His
site is jam packed with TOTALLY FREE Advice, Tutorials, Tools
and Articles on Web Site Design and Deployment:
http://bytesandbites.is.dreaming.org email: bytes@ihug.co.nz
