Web vs. CB Radio

[JOSEPH MAXIMILLIAN MURPHY]

>As you may recall, CB was
>useful and fun until so many people crowded onto it
>that it became unusable.  Could it be that in twenty years
>we'll still be loaning books and answering reference questions,
>while the older among us will wistfully look at one another
>from time to time and say "Remember the web?"

I wonder, though, if you can't say this about any "popularist" advance in
information technology. From moveable type to the photocopier, printing
advances have made it possible for more people to generate more documents.
And if there are more documents, more of them, and probably a higher
percentage, are garbage. At least, they look like garbage to the person who's
interested in something else. Shoot, books on neurosurgery and rocket science
look like gibberish to poor ol' liberal-arts me... and so do their web sites.

Traffic and the sheer number of documents probably will make certain Web
strategies less useful. We've already seen the first generation of search
engines become nearly obsolete. Indexing and cataloging sites will become more
important, as full-text engines reach capacity.

I agree that growing access to the Web will end up changing the way we use it.
I also think the Web and books will co-exist for a long, long time. I do
believe that the uses we find for the Web will ensure that it continues to
exist (in some form) until something demonstrably superior comes along.

-Joe Murphy            "Sometimes you just have to look reality in the face
murphyj at cua.edu         and deny it."
                           -- Garrison Keillor