Properties Of The New Web Media

Properties

The World Wide Web has a particularly interesting collection of properties, not shared by any other media.

• Persistent
• Asynchronous
• Anonymous access
• Written
• Updateable
• Searcheable
• Global
• Instant
• Multimedia
• Secure
• Public publishing

For the first time in history, individuals and small organizations have the capacity to publish worldwide at almost zero cost.

A Media That Consolidates

One of the reason that the web has become the focus of the Internet is because it organizes all the other Internet channels:

• Email
• FTP
• News
• IRC
• Gopher
• WAIS
• Telnet

A good website can use URLs to bind all these resources together in a coherent manner.

The Telephone Metaphor

Despite the Internet/web's success, there is still a lot of trepidation about the Internet. To see how silly a lot of these concerns are, cast the sort of questions people ask about the Internet in terms of the telephone, which is an established communications technology:

• Is the telephone just a passing fad?
• Few of my customers have a telephone.
• If I install telephones, my staff will talk on the phone all day instead of working.
• Do we need to give every staff member a telephone?
• Why should I telephone someone when I can just send them a letter?

Next slide