The web is at the same time, mundane and unbelievable. It enables any voice to be heard by virtually any ear on the planet, yet, if it leads where it seems to be going, most of its offerings will be simple repackaging of what we already know. As it folds into our already overloaded lives, it will pull us forward and grant us greatness despite ourselves. I say with no apologies that, in may ways, I'm unimpressed with the web. The volitility of the information is annoying; a net search often yields many links to sites that are no longer valid. The lack of bandwidth and the immaturity and churn of the HTML formatting standard demonstrate the infancy of this medium. However, the most striking lack which is evident in the web today is that we hardly know what to do with it. Because it is difficult to percieve the totality of where this technology will lead, we are bound to fill it with reflections of what we already know.

We see personal web pages with pictures of pets and girlfriends, company advertisements, online ordering, and sites like this one, which is little more than paper translated to the screen.

The real potential of the web and its descendants may never be realized, and can just barley be imagined. Before we have a chance to figure it out, the web, like other life-changing inventions, will most likely settle in to the familiar routine of comercialism, home movies, sit-coms, and sex.

We're far from the days when inventions can radically change us. The web may yet have such potential, but unlike the telephone, which transformed us from a letter writing culture to a phone calling culture in the space of a few years, the Internet, with its various incarnations and tools, augments rather than replaces what we already know.

To become a real part of our lives, any grand invention must descend from the plateau of wonder and potential until it emerges as just another tool. As we get used to it, it becomes as common and as interesting as our toothbrush.

Television brought us pictures from the other side of the world and from the moon. Now it brings us Home Improvement, Wheel of Fortune, and the Psychic Network. Once in a while it brings us images of quality and art, but those are as likely as not to be cancelled due to bad ratings.

Airlines are working to maintain their charm, but with discount flights, fare wars, and market take-overs, the magic has been replaced with simple utility. If you need to get somewhere in a hurry, take a plane. It's no orient express anymore, just a couple hours of sitting in a tiny, uncomfortable seat.

This century we have also made mighty strides in medicine only to find ourselves shackled with confusing and intrusive health care policies, burocratic procedures, insurance forms, HMOs, corner cutting, malpractice, malpractice insurance, insurance fraud, and statements that say, "This is not a bill, please pay $698.23."

Once a mystical device of the High Order, the PC now has taken its place next to the VCR, CD, and TV as just another acronym of our everyday life.The web will most likely settle into commercialism, and then slide down to the lowest common denominator. Like the VCR industry that was driven early on by the pornography business, the web will grow for simple, common reasons, and not because of it's ability to join minds across the world.

It will contribute to the rest of our fractured, busy, inter-connected world and will make it even more unlikely that we will ever speak to the neighbors more than a house away. Cars and telephones have for years allowed us to seek out like-minded people to associate with. The web and the Internet didn't invent this fractionalization, but they do and will continue it in even larger way as more and more gain access.

The impact of the web on our society will be far below its potential. Coupled with cellular technology and the digitizaztion of everything, the Net and its ultra high bandwidth offspring will provide merely an alternate delivery mechanism for the same old television, telephone, radio, and movies.

It's not that I don't believe in its potential. The fact that anyone on this planet with a web browser can access these words is not lost on me, but what are the odds that some college students in Germany or Brazile will find themselves here, and if they do, will they care? They will care about as much as the average neighbor cares what goes on a couple houses down. If I'm not in someone else's virtual neighborhood, there's little reason for him to seek me out or to spend time wading through my little corner of the web.

This, I think is the limiting factor of the web. It's not that it can't be a voice to the world, or a forum of open thought and a meeting of minds, but simply that it won't. We only have so much time in this world to meet people and find issues to care about. Even if our friends and family are scattered to the winds, thanks to phones, cars, and email, it's still easier to stay in touch with them than to try to meet the strangers next door.

And so, like all marvelous inventions, which promised so much and delivered just more of the same, the web will become little more than another black box with a remote control.

All is not lost, however. The World Wide Web will enter our lives just as firmly as have all the other devices. We will come to feel naked without it, the way we do if we loose phone service in a storm, or have to be away from our computers and email for too long.

The web will become a part of us. As it becomes popularized, and it provides us more and more things to listen to, it will also provide us more and more of an audience. Instead of running an ad in the newspaper to sell or buy something, we'll turn to the web. Instead of putting up posters to advertise garage sales, car washes, and local bands, we'll post it on the web.

In times of crisis, we turn to the television and radio to keep informed. In the near future, we'll turn to the web.We may find ourselves one day happily running our favorite episode of Gilligan's Island from the CBS archive when something shocks us out of our boots. The web will be there. We will talk, we will listen, and without having to wait for the local anchorman, CNN, or the president to tell us what's going on and what to think, we will already know, first hand, with our own twenty cents thrown in.

We will find ourselves dependant on this new tool and because it listens to us as well as talks at us, it is different than all other inventions before. FCC regulations were enacted to protect the scarce natural resource of electromagnetic frequencies by keeping stations from stepping on each others signals and making sure that any group of people trusted with this scarce commody use it for the public good. Now, no licence is needed to broadcast to as much of the world as cares to listen.

When bandwidth increases to allow realtime audio and video we can have as many radio and television stations as we have people. The only thing we have to stop us from braodcasting filthy language, raw hate, explicit sexual images, lible, and lies is the same sense of dignity and responsibility that keeps us from farting in public. Those that don't have it won't use it and it will be the burden of us all to quietly weather the occasional display of the hoplessly boorish.

This change will creep up on us.We will hardly notice it amid all the old media noise delivered through the new digital networks of the future. On one hand it will be giving us the same commercial, common crap that we're already getting. On the other hand, without our hardly noticing it, it will be granting each of us more power than any government is going to be able to control without shutting the whole thing down or abandoning any facade of respect for the spirit of the first Amendment.

Most of the time it will lie quietly, like a drunk, sleeping giant, unaware of his own strength, but someday it will wake up and newspapers, television affiliates, cable companies, and governments will begin to find themselves growing irrelevant, not because of grand intentions or evil intent, but simply because the web listens.

It will not happen with a sudden revolution or manefesto, but with a yawn. Most likely, we will hardly even notice it.

Thank you Pandora.

:^D