A Poke in the Eye of the Online/Multimedia Industrial Complex
Vol. 1, No. 12
[scientifically tested to take no more than 3 minutes to read, unless on the john]
Microsoft's High Road Has Potholes
Read this, if you can:
"...We intend to take a fairly skeptical stance toward the romance and rapidly escalating vanity of cyberspace. We do not start out with the smug assumption that the Internet changes the nature of human thought, or that all the restraints that society imposes on individuals in "real life" must melt away in cyberia. There is a deadening conformity in the hipness of cyberspace culture in which we don't intend to participate."
The sound you hear is the big WHOOSH as the words go over the head of Microsoft's marketing people. The excerpt comes from Michael Kinsley's opening manifesto in Slate, the much-hyped online zine that Microsoft is funding, but not influencing...supposedly. The idea as Kinsley, the whiny ex-"Mr. Left" on "Crossfire," sees it is to be an independent, intellectual voice on the Web, even if the intended audience usually watches "60 Minutes" and thinks HotWired is the way someone might steal their car. The idea as Bill "We're Catching Up to This Internet Thing" Gates sees it is, "we can't beat Netscape with our technology (cough, cough), so we'll beat them with content. Do they have a cool magazine?! Nah, nah!" etc.
3MR slid over to Slate (www.slate.com), fully expecting to retch after wading through a Redmondesque New Republic. The writing is surprisingly decent, especially the "Does Microsoft Play Fair?" feature, which is really a bunch of folks sending email back and forth, pausing to rip Steve Ballmer (MS Honcho of Disinformation) when possible, and making good cases all around. Kind of a point/counterpoint over the wire.
But, there are problems. From a design standpoint, Slate looks a bit much like Microsoft's mammoth home page. The navigation is difficult at best, and follows too closely like a print magazine. And if you made sense of the above blathering excerpt, you'd know Slate doesn't want to be "hip," meaning they refuse to understand the Web and its readers, who don't have time to wade through 10-page features, complete with intro, conclusion and pull-quotes. Not to mention the breezy pseudo-intellectual tone that permeates the zine, making content barely readable in print and almost impossible to comprehend via monitor.
And they think they're going to get $19.95 per year for online subscriptions? Magazines like Newsweek cost more, so goes the (il)logic, but to read Newsweek do you need to own an $1,800 contraption, a $150 modem, a $25/month Internet service, and no life? Most importantly, Newsweek makes the transition easily to the best reading room in the house, the toilette, while Slate only makes it there if you print it out or buy a print version at Starbucks. All the better to wipe with.
Alta Vista Celebrity Name Search-Off, Round 1 (cont.)
This week's matchup: Matt Groening vs. Scott Adams
For those new to the Roast, we're doing head-to-head name searches in Alta Vista to find the most popular person on the Web. Very scientific, we know. This week, we try the funny papers. The challenger has gone from underground comic strip ("Life in Hell") to mainstream mega-success ("The Simpsons") faster than you can say "cowabunga." In the other corner is the man who somehow made computer geeks sexy, while filling his e-newsletter with more promotional Dilbert items than an infomercial...it's Scott Adams.
The Tally:
Matt Groening: 1,000 matches
representative site: Five Reasons Matt Groening Won't Give Out His E-Mail
["No. 2: More requests for nude pictures of Marge Simpson."]
Scott Adams: 2,000 matches
representative site: Sock Puppets Rule!
[when people skydive with sock puppets on their hands to make your home page, you know you're really popular...]
Thanks to at least 100 Web pages that reprinted his opus, "Men Who Use Computers Are The New Sex Symbols Of The '90s," Dilbert triumphs easily over Homer. Vive le DNRC! The geeks shall inherit the earth (if they can find enough coaxial cable).
"3-Minute Roast" is a weekly, advertisement-free, opinionated rip on anything that strikes our fancy in the online world.
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