Wolf Lahti's criticism of D. Siegel's web pages

[Patrick O'Connell <titanide -at- MICRO -dot- ORG>]

Now, *without* having seen the web pages in question:

I must STRONGLY disagree with Wolf's assertion that the Web is not
primarily about design, "at least at this stage." Yes, the Web now
contains a huge amount of useful content. From my own surfing experiences,
however, I must say that I think frivolous pages on the Web far, FAR
outweighs serious pages on it at present.

It's hard to see where the desperate need was for pages for Mr. Edible
Starchy Tuber (a.k.a. Potato) Head, the Lite-Brite page, or Bianca's Smut
Shack. All three of these are interactive, in all three cases people have
clearly devoted serious time to creating them, yet like most Web pages,
nobody would starve or become information-deprived if they were suddenly
to vanish overnight.

The least judgmental thing *I* would say right now is that the ratio of
frivolous to serious Web page content is roughly equal. And, by God, I
hope it stays that way. The more animal species become extinct, the more
our green spaces disappear, the more urbanized and grim our world becomes,
I think, the more people are going to need cheering up. What fun is (a)
hot new world-changing technology(-ies) if you can't do something utterly
pointless with it?  :-)


PatO'
titanide -at- micro -dot- org