Here's another, and maybe another: The problem with the Web today is not finding something ... something to read, something on your topic ... it's finding the next thing.
If you are on a topic, which is actually a kind of metaphor - I'll try to explain - I assure you you do not want to read just one article. When you finish the one your reading, you want go straight to reading the next one. (You may not realize this, but it's definitely true.)
The Web kind of gets this. It suspects it. It has an uncomfortable feeling about it. It's sort of trying. But it doesn't realize how COMPLETELY ESSENTIAL this is ... and it's ... afraid. For these reasons, it's not actually doing it. It's sort of kind of doing it, but not quite, and not quite is, well, not really.
Here's the thing about topics: they are not necessarily very specific. I'll give you an example. I recently connected with a very liberal rag called The Washington Spectator. It's quite high level, meaning, there's a lot of (a large number of) actual articles. Now, at the home page, it's the usual thing, assorted headlines. It's basically the essence of disorder. But if you click one of the tabs at the top, you get, first, a menu, which is actually not a bad thing, and then if you click one of the menu items - a topic - you do get a reasonably long list of headlines. That's sort of exciting. At the same time, it's completely faulty. Well, it's not that a list of headlines is a bad thing, what's bad is ... where it goes from there ... or where it doesn't go from there.
Where it goes is, if you click a headline, you get an article.
To get the next article, you have to go back to the list of headlines.
And that is a terrible thing.
But it's not terrible for the obvious reasons. One of those has to do with the essential folly of Web design today, but to figure that out, you have to go through several levels of more petty folly, the first of which is this: that list of headlines is divided up into some unknown number of pages. What if, by some miracle, you were deep in that list of pages, and the obvious thing happened, and when you went back to the list of headlines, you ended up back on the first page. You're basically sunk. Now it's true you are probably smart enough to use the back button and get back to the page of headlines, from the list of pages of headline, you were on. But the question isn't whether you're smart or not, it's "do you have nerves of steel, and when are they going to crack." Even nerves of steel will crack.
Let me put it this way: the browser back button is not the solution to this problem.
Here's what the solution to this problem looks like: STOP DIVIDING LISTS OF HEADLINES INTO PAGES. JUST GIVE US THE WHOLE LIST.
But, clever people that you are, you will see that this will cause problems with people's browsers.
So I will tell you what: THAT IS NOT A PROBLEM WITH THE BROWSER, AND IT IS NOT A PROBLEM WITH THE COMPUTER, IT'S A PROBLEM WITH THE PROGRAMMERS. THEY CAN'T SEE THE OBVIOUS PROBLEM. IF THEY COULD, THEY WOULD SOLVE IT.
NOW IT'S TRUE THAT THE OBVIOUS PROBLEM LOOKS A BIT TRICKY. IT'S DEFINITELY EASIER TO "SOLVE" IT BY DIVIDING THE PAGE - a very, very long page - INTO SMALLER PAGES. Next page. Next page. Aaaaaaaaaargh.
Try to think. I know there are pages that sort of do this: as you scroll down, more items load. I can see it's quite difficult to make this work properly. I can see that because, mostly, they don't. WE HAVE GOT TO SOLVE THIS PROBLEM. THIS IS NOT AN INSOLUBLE PROBLEM.
Now, I want to return to the thing about topics. For example, at The Washington Spectator, well, here, I'll show you:
Politics, economics, and so on. Those are very broad topics. Each one of those menu items gets you a huge multi-page list of headlines ... articles about all sorts of different things.
If a topic is something very specific, these aren't topics at all. But I did say that topics aren't necessarily specific. The question is, is that meaningful?
What does that question mean?
You are thinking it means something obvious. No! The real problems are not obvious. Not to you. You are looking at the details, and not seeing the big picture. I ask you, what is the big picture.
The big picture is scholarship.
But you look at that word, scholarship, and what do you see? The details. That's not the big picture. You see scholars. They are scurrying around the campus, like bespectacled rats, hunched over their screens in the newsroom, in their rumpled but stylish shirts and pants, swarming Washington, sticking their cameras into the faces of politicians and bureaucrats, asking, I'll grant you, well worded and intelligent questions, going out to lovely lunches - and that's a very good thing. They're smart and personable, unlike myself. I am a real scholar, a surly nobody who thinks he's brilliant and knows it all ... except he can't get the information, because it's caught in an endlessly tangled Web!
A Web of Lists of Links, of "Next" and "Previous" pages organized around supposed Topics and Sub Topics. WHAT IS THE BIG PICTURE? WHAT, ACTUALLY, DOES A SCHOLAR DO? A SCHOLAR READS
AND READS AND READS AND READS AND READS AND READS
A SCHOLAR DOES NOT REQUIRE HIS MATERIAL TO BE PREDIGESTED, PRESORTED, PRE ANYTHING. WHEN I, A SCHOLAR, A PROLETARIAN, A HOI POLOI, AM DONE WITH ARTICLE ONE, I'M READY FOR ARTICLE TWO, AND THEN ARTICLE THREE, AND THEN ARTICLE FOUR ... I'LL KEEP GOING UNTIL I REACH ARTICLE 75, AND ARTICLE 750.
I TOLD YOU, YOU ARE NOT SEEING THE BIG PICTURE. A LIST OF HEADLINES, DIVIDED UP INTO PAGES, OR MORE PROPERLY NOT DIVIDED UP INTO PAGES, IS OF NO USE TO ME. IT'S NOT OF USE, IT'S A NUISANCE. I MEAN, YES, AT ANOTHER TIME, FOR REASONS I DON'T NEED TO GET INTO, IT'S A NECESSITY, BUT UNTIL YOU GIVE ME SOMETHING OF REAL VALUE, IT'S JUST INANITY. THAT'S WHAT I SAID: AN ENDLESS LIST OF HEADLINES LOOKS LIKE THE SOLUTION, BUT THE ACTUAL SOLUTION IS, AN ENDLESS SCROLL OF ARTICLES.
And yes, we have revolved back to an era where we read from scrolls. It's just a wonderful thing.
AND YES, WE CAN DO THIS.
THIS CONCLUDES SECTION 1.
