Whether you think the Web is growing too fast or too slow, it still has forces driving it and forces restraining it. Some of the driving forces include Moore's Law and what is often called "the compelling nature of computer-mediated interactive communication." How's that for a mouthful? Some of the restraining forces include an uncertain legal and regulatory environment as well as consumer fear and hypocrisy.
Even if all this nastiness that so resembles real life were to disappear, the Web would be far from perfect. Here's the rest of Peter Denning's bad news.
Denning identifies five areas that need attention:
Techno Hypocrisy Do you know anyone who holds cyberspace to higher standards than physical space? Many are naive dreamers. Others fundamentally misunderstand what's going on. The Internet and the Web are a new medium for human communication. And guess what? Truth be told, your average "real" storefront or restaurant is a hotbed of all sorts of immorality and crime. If you listened in on all the conversations in a restaurant, you would be shocked. SHOCKED. The couple holding hands at the front table aren't married. The two guys laughing at the table against the wall are dining on funds they got from financing a bootleg cigarette run over the Peace Bridge. The guy with his teenage daughters over near the door is bribing them with a fancy meal not to tell their mom about his new girlfriend. So if I want to open a Swedish restaurant on Hertel are you going to advise me against it?
What about the dozens of credit card numbers I collect each week along with the appropriate signatures? Won't I be tempted to sell to a thief? So what's the other reason people like the Bad News? It lets them dismiss something new, avoid change, and cling to their old ways. Also, I think, the Internet makes them feel like the rules are changing and folks who succeeded under the old rules don't always want them changed. For example, some young boys were attracted to computers because the mainframe technology of the 80's gave them centralized power and control. Almost all male, they grew into mandarins, possessors of the arcane language and code, comfortable moving among the lesser mortals, also called "stupid end-users", usually female, earning barely above minimum wage at monochrome terminals. These mandarins resist new media.
To them, the barbarians are at the gates. That means you and me and the woman who can design systems that won't treat people like "stupid end-users". We don't know geek (Unix or C) and we don't want to learn it any more than we want to learn plumbing and wiring and calculus before we open a restaurant. Many people focus on the Bad News. An effective marketer must take them into account, no matter how wrong-headed and frightened they may be. Even if they're the boss? As for bosses, I think that we haven't begun to see the backlash yet. It will occur when the early adopters are on board and the technophobes start feeling disenfranchised. In the automobile industry, this was about when Henry Ford found the mass market by making cars black and easier to use and making the parts interchangeable and easy to maintain. You see the results from Brake-O to Pep Boys to the babies conceived in back seats to the the funerals of traffic fatalities when those automotive products "crash". The press recently discovered drunk driving and Road Rage about fifty years after they became popular. Is anyone suggesting that we all turn in our car keys?
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