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Words with Mitch Ratcliffe Mitch Ratcliffe has chronicled and participated in the development of the Internet for more than 15 years. He spent his early days on The W.E.L.L. and in the 1990s, he was covering networking, privacy and cryptography for MacWEEK. He also edited Digital Media, the first publication to really explain how the Internet would really work and he spearheaded ZD Net's Year 2000 coverage for the two years leading up to Y2K. He continues to share his views on technology via his personal weblog, and through Internet/Media Strategies Inc. 
Posted on Wednesday 23 July 2003  The Copydesk: What do you think is wrong with the Internet, and what can be done to make it better? Mitch Ratcliffe: Here’s what’s wrong with the Internet: It’s not available everywhere and the technology is always in the user’s face. How can we make it better: Put it everywhere. The richness of the metalogue created by ubiquitous densely connected networks is a valuable and beautiful resource, even before it is smelted and refined. Really, though, we need to stop obsessing on the Internet as an artifact of our brilliance as nerds or as a species. Screw the revolution; the Internet is like paper or film. There are companies that make paper and film better or make very customized papers and films, but they don’t make you acknowledge their brand and brilliance before taking in what is delivered via the paper or film, do they? The colophon is at the back of a book because paper and fonts are nice, really great, but they are secondary to what flows through those media. If I’d answered by snail mail, the paper would not have screamed “Brought to you by Weyerhaeuser!” when you opened the envelope. Kodak puts its brand on the back of the picture. A lot of my best friends are nerds and I love what they do, but let’s get back to the message, McLuhan notwithstanding. The Net gets “better” all the time from a technological perspective. That also means you have to spend a day a week implementing and upgrading widgets on a Web site, taking time away from what you really want to do with the Net, which is communicate your ideas, art, performance or perversity (yes, even porn sites suffer from technology worship: "Bitches in heat, now in Macromedia Flash!") Make the Net available everywhere, somehow, and, after an appropriate interregnum to celebrate this accomplishment, make the Net better. Have a holiday once a year to celebrate the nifty new features introduced on the Net in the previous 12 months, but, geez, let’s get on with the communication and increased understanding of one another and our times that we’re trying to achieve as an emerging global society. For more about Mitch Ratcliffe, visit his website www.ratcliffe.com |
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