I get a big hearty laugh whenever I here people talking about "The death of the Web."
I think what they really mean is "The death of the ability to make money on the web." Now, don't despair all you friends out there that are banking on the web as a viable source of income. I think there will be markets beyond an MBA's imagination available on the web... for those people who know what to market.
I see two sides of the web now. One, is the commercial side. pepsi.com, levis.com, saturn.com... These sites provide virtually no content but extremely vivid graphics. Sound familiar? It's just like television, only it is slower... lots slower. I keep getting this image in my mind of people with aol accounts, paying by the minute to use the aol browser, only to visit budweiser.com. Yeah, it sounds silly. But not as silly as paying 30 dollars a month for cable TV so they can bring those ads into your home. It makes sense to me that they should Pay YOU for allowing to bring that commercial programming into your house... but I doubt we could get Ted to spring for that idea.
As soon as the hits stop flowing to sony.com, there will be people saying that the web is dead. Which is fine, as far as I am concerned. Actually, I kind of like negative web hype. I think it will only reduce the amount of time before people figure out the real trick to the web: provide things that people cannot find anywhere else.
Now, don't get me wrong, I am not against marketing. The problem is that most marketing I see is for useless crap I don't want. I would LOVE watching advertisements if they were for products I was interested in. Professional music equipment, computer hardware and software, "fringe" products. Whoever thinks that these huge over-marketed companies will survive on the web is dumb. Especially when pornography is just 4 links in the opposite direction.
Unfortunately, it is the Pepsi's and the Levi's of corporate America who have the funds to toy with this web thing. Putting up a web site probably costs less than 2 or 3 prime-time 30 second spots... ie, it is a fraction of their marketing budget. For companies who survive off the simple principle of product association through media saturation, the Web is a sure marketing bet. If it is on the web, some shmuck will check it out.
"shmuck"... my own euphemism for a Programmed Consumer. An "Abductee" as us Schwa folks would say. From a George Carlin skit: "If you glue two pieces of wood together that have never been glued together before, some shmuck will buy it." But it is the shmucks that are now driving the push to get people on line. "net-savvy" people? fuck 'em! The real money lies in the net-ignorant folks who, thanks to those Prodigy ads, think they can meet slutty, sultry "it all started when I typed hello" women online. But it seems that as more people start exploring the net and talking with people, the number of "net-savvy" people are growing almost as fast as the number of shmucks getting pay-by-the-minute ISP accounts. It seems to me that the net provides a great place to educate people that these corporate symbols: the golden arches, the Nike Swoop, Shell, Ford, the Holy Cross, Visa, are the symbols of global insanity. In my mind, I associate these symbols with Evil. The red and white Dow symbol evokes the same thoughts in my mind as the number 666 evokes in Christians. And we all know about the sanity of those DuPont folks.
(sidenote): I just can't get over the fact that their is bible passages on In and Out Burger packaging. Rainforests are slashed to make way for cattle, or else the cattle are just raised in dark bins on a diet of chemicals, they excrete an unimaginable amount of biological wastes, they eat grass which leads to erosion... they eat the grain that could be feeding starving third world nations, then they are killed by a hammer blow to the skull, then they are packaged in paper from trees, and then we eat it (yum!) and we get heart disease, killing us early... and then the paper goes into landfills. All in the name of Jesus Christ! This, once and for all, proved to me that Christianity is evil, and anyone who believes in that sort of "Christians has dominion over the Earth, and therefore destroying animal and non-Christian lifeforms is okay" philosophy is fucked in the head. Oh, they have one of the most well-organized political action systems in the nation too. My dad always warned me that Catholic girls were the most promiscuous of them all. News stories about priests raping boys don't shock me anymore... All clergy wear black... nuns slap kids fingers with rulers when their penmanship is poor... I could go on. Do you worship the Earth and the Life it supports? You must be a pagan satanist.
It may seem like this message is rambling and dis-joined, but remember, quantum mechanics mathematically proves everything is connected.