Outside this monthly column (in my so called real life) I am a Web development laborer. I began at a time when the state of information art on the Net was gopher and lynx. My early work was merely getting people connected to the Net for email and file sharing. Now I toil in the vast arena of infotainment and Web sales.

So, being one of them, I feel justified in asking a few questions of the rest of the Web world. Are you tired of the Web yet? Have you grown weary of the fever pitch of pitchmen leaping forth from computer screens? Are you tired of Web sites that deliver fantastic graphical elements and little else? Is selling the consumers dross they don't need the best use for a global communications network?

The Net and the Web had potential. When I see such potential frittered away, I get angry. Perhaps I am just a cranky guy. Really though, doesn't it get under your skin too?

There was a time that even TV seemed full of hope and promise. But like the dawning of current Web huckster-ism, TV soon became what we know today, an advertising medium wrapped in a somnambulant delivery system.

Is there anything that can prevent the slide of the Web into the abyss of manufactured consumer demand and media manipulation? Certainly not while those of us who use it abuse it.

We should not expect the newest arrivals to the Web to understand what they have lost since they have never known the old Net. But we have a duty to tell them and show them what the Web could be.

We can walk away from the struggle to keep at least some small corner of the Net free of government and corporate spew or we can use our talents to ensure that organizations and people who stand against the conspiracy of consumerism have a voice in the new medium.

I am not asking you to stop working for the Web media machine, just use some of your skill to help those who do struggle against it. We can not expect to roll back the headlong rush toward corporate colonization of the Net. We can hope to keep alive the flame of populous dissent and free expression until such time as the Net is allowed to fulfill its promise as the voice of our global village.


(C) 1999 - Steven Leith