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May 2002: Paul Smith - It's a mad mad mad mad mad mad W-W-World
We British are an obsessive bunch. A trip to my local newsagent proved this beyond any reasonable doubt. Whilst looking for my regular copy of Ferret Breeders Gazette I found all of the following genuine publications on prominent display: Steam Railway, Today's Railways, The Railway Magazine, Rail, Steam World, Trains, Locomotives Illustrated, Modern Railways, Rail Express Magazine, Heritage Railway, Steam Days, British Railways Illustrated, Railway Bylines and the ever controversial Narrow Gauge World. And it isn't a specialist anorak-wearers newsagent. It's a W.H.Smith. It's curious then that a recent study shows that our use of the Web is actually now falling. Fewer people are spending less time online looking for cheap DVDs/flights/train-tickets/shags. Given that we're a nation with more than our fair share of loonies, why is our obsession with the Internet on the wane?
I think people have noticed Web pages are essentially dull. There are words in a selection of:
fonts, colours and sizes, sure, and some of them are underlined.
You even get the occasional picture if you're lucky. But for the MTV generation it's all a bit static. Even the multimedia feast that is Flash struggles to deliver material quick enough to keep someone with a 56k connection and a 5.6 second attention span interested.
Even for the more content-driven user the surfing novelty is wearing off. You may visit a site once out of curiosity but what will draw you back? Only the prospect of something new and interesting to see or do there. And the reality is that 99% of the Internet still seems to have 'Copyright 1999' at the bottom of it. So if you have a Web site, give it a spring spruce. You don't need to go crazy. Just add a splash of colour and some extra interaction, even if it's only a handy java PC-build-quote-generator.
Then there's the constant risk of not getting what you think you're getting on the Web. I'm not only thinking about Internet dating. Who could resist a Birmingham to New York return flight for $150? Not a midlands lady I'll call 'Kate'. It wasn't until her card had been charged and the tickets dispatched that she discovered the Birmingham she was flying from was the one incontinently in Alabama rather than next to the M6. The US site's defence was that the Birmingham International Airport in question was clearly shown to have the code BHM rather than the UK's BHX. Even Watchdog didn't want to get involved, and when it comes to the complexities of international consumer law, who can blame them?
It could be a reaction to our increasingly insular society. Often all I want from a site is the 'phone number of the company in question, and in turn the reassurance of a human voice. Perhaps our sudden disinterest is the Why Don't You? effect. People have 'just turned off their PC's and gone out and done something less boring instead'. Like standing in the rain listing the numbers of passing trains in a small book.
Paul Smith is known as The King of PC component distribution.
503 words about this Internet thing everyone seems so interested in, Dale. I hope you approve.
Paul
I'm lucky enough to receive semi-regular money for my bits for Indie, but once in a while I push a little too hard for payment. I understand now that the horse's head was a step too far... Roll your cursor over the cheque below to discover (after a moment or two's downloading) what I mean.
Dale, if you couldn't tell, is the funniest man on the face of this Earth.