Pondering the Obvious

Then, build a web site out of it. Sorta like the writer putting that first piece of paper into the trusty IBM Selectric. Back in the days when key clicks MEANT something. Back when only the publishing-enabled, the paper rich, the journalistically employed, and "known" professional writers could influence the nature of what we read.

Everybody else was out to lunch! Oh, you could put out a pamphlet, a leaflet, maybe even a weekly. But, your audience was small, incredibly small when you think of the audiences we can routinely influence today. How long ago was it that if you wanted to publish your own life story, pictures and all, you were rich, crazy or somebody was footin' the bill for you? Step back five years and think whether it was possible then, in 1993. Not at MY socio-economic level, it wasn't!

Click to 1998. Short jump for most of us. In that time, what have we created for ourselves? Self-publication. Self-edification. Self promotion. Self indulgence. Hell...sometimes it's self-defeating! The things you see nowadays! The things people are saying! Confessing to murders online! Getting married. Coming out. Haiku to barf for. Poems. Short stories. Hate sites. Really BAD novellas. Risque writing, some of it not too bad. Romantic interludes à la Harold Robbins crossed with Hustler. Two-way trysts, trash, trivia and tirades, even treason can all be found with a few mouse clicks. What is all this saying? About us? About the world? About the future?

And how does all of that tie into "Internet Images?" The short answer is, "it don't." But, it's what I've been thinking about the last few days, in between all the "make a living" stuff I do.

But, when you think about publishing on the Web, putting YOUR life into HTML and JPEG's, it does become sorta interesting. Seems there's millions of web pages at GeoCities now. WBS has thousands of folks visiting its chat sites, and every member gets homepage space, if they want to use it. Same for AOL and CS...all the big services give you space for "your homepage." Even the small ISPs will give you a couple of megs to play with. All that space...all that bandwidth...all that CONTENT! How in the world are we gonna make use of all this...technology?

Here's where it's goin.' The first and only assumption I'll make is that "cable modem" service extends to the Internet in the very near future. It's already in use in many places, some of them pretty unlikely. You can download pages, images, files, etc., at maybe 10 MB per second. A good share of it, anyway. Thing about cable is you are

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