Publishing and the Internet
About a dozen years ago a friend of mine and I were discussing the impact of the Internet and the fledgling World-Wide Web on modern society. Having used computer networks for e-mail and real-time messaging for a number of years (remember, BITnet, PHONE on DECnet, and talk?), I already realized that the Internet had the potential to revolutionize personal and business communications. I saw the Web facilitated access to a wealth of information with unbelievable speed. But I had missed a key point that my friend pointed out for me. The Internet and Web dramatically lowered the barriers for publishing information.
The years that have passed since then have made me realize how important this is. Before the rise of the Internet as a public communications medium, the barriers to publishing information for a large audience were substantial. If you had a significant amount of information and a unique approach, you might be able to convince someone to publish a book. You could submit articles or letters to newspapers and magazines. Or you could print and distribute on your own. Most approaches required a significant amount of effort, money, connections, and/or luck.
Bulletin-board systems, USENET, and other Internet services started to change that, and the Web took things further and faster. Suddenly anyone that had access to a machine with an Internet connection could publish information that anyone with a web browser could see. At the time it was a limited audience and an even smaller set of people who had appropriate access to machines that could host web pages. But it was a beginning.
As the explosive growth of the Web progressed, the barriers to publishing continued to fall dramatically. The next problem was organizing information in a way that people could actually find contributions on subjects that they were interested in. Enter the search engine. For those that didn't have the inclination to setup their own webservers, along came free hosting sites such as Geocities.
As anyone reading this amateur piece will know, the Internet continues to evolve with the growing popularity of blogs and social/business-networking sites. Blogs are the open diaries of the world, the letters to the editor that were never chosen for publication, the rallying cries of political activists, and outlets for anyone with anything to say.