Chapter 1
Everything you know about publishing is wrong

Everything you know about the Web is wrong
The Web is not the lost city of the geeks. It is not there so that the techies can take over the world. The Web is not ‘cutting edge’ technology, but rather primitive technology. There is no such thing as a ‘webmaster’.

An Internet month is not like a normal year, because while there are now far more websites and people reading them, the underlying structures of the Web have not really changed in the last 5 years. Broadband is not a reality for the average consumer. Interactive TV is still a pipe dream. Virtual reality is still science fiction.

The Internet was invented as a communications medium and the Web was invented as a publishing solution for content. As Publish Magazine stated in October 2000, “We stand on the threshold of a revolution. The increasing demand for businesses to reach the customer and each other has brought the world to another upheaval—an Internet communication revolution.”

“Strip away the highfalutin talk, and at bottom, the Internet is a tool that dramatically lowers the cost of communication,” Business Week wrote in March 2001. When America Online chairman Steve Case talked at the JP Morgan annual technology conference in May 2001, he stated that, “the key driver” over the coming decade are products and services “that really do give consumers better ways to get information or to communicate or to be entertained.”

So, in essence, the Web is fundamentally a place where people come to publish and find content. The primary activity that a person does on a website is read. What’s more, the Web is going to remain a publishing medium for text-based content (with simple graphics) for the next 20 years at least. Broadband, streaming video, virtual reality data suits, you name it, in time will all find a place in the great big Web. But in 2020, millions upon millions of people will still have everyday needs to read up on something, to learn more about something so that they can buy it, sell it or make it.

Tim Berners Lee invented the World Wide Web because he realized that the traditional tools of publishing were not working. In the late Eighties, there was a problem at the CERN Research Institute where he worked. It was a classic problem of the new economy: Getting the right information to the right people at the right time.

At CERN this problem was being addressed by the classic human network approach. If you wanted something you talked to somebody else in a corridor, in a canteen, on the phone, by email. That person scratched their head and said maybe that John knows where that research paper is, or maybe Mary has it on her computer, or give me a call later and I’ll have a root around in my office, or did you check the filing cabinet in Office 5A?

This classic approach worked great in a situation where everybody knew everybody else, where things changed at a sensible pace, and where there was a reasonable quantity of content being created. It did not work in a new economy whose principle characteristics were the speed of change and the massive increase in the amount of content being created.

As a research institute, with lots of visiting researchers, CERN faced another key problem; a high turnover of people. “When two years is a typical length of stay, information is constantly being lost,” Berners Lee pointed out in his original proposal for the Web in 1990. “If a CERN experiment were a static once-only development, all the information could be written in a big book. As it is, CERN is constantly changing as new ideas are produced, as new technology becomes available, and in order to get around unforeseen technical problems… Keeping a book up to date becomes impractical, and the structure of the book needs to be constantly revised.”

Does this sound like a problem your organization is facing today? Join the party! In 1990, Tim Berners Lee had the vision to foresee that, “The problems of information loss may be particularly acute at CERN, but in this case (as in certain others), CERN is a model in miniature of the rest of world in a few years time. CERN meets now some problems which the rest of the world will have to face soon.”

Technologists dreamed of the Web as Automation Heaven. Buy some software, get a website, and—presto—you were slashing costs and driving profits. It doesn’t work that way. People communicate, not machines. People write content, not machines. Sure, software can make communication and publishing processes more efficient, but if the quality of communication and content isn’t high to begin with, it’s the classic garbage in, garbage out situation.

Business to business (B2B) commerce on the Web was seen as a radical development that would create the perfect ‘frictionless’ marketplace. As more and more B2B websites bomb, a new reality is dawning. “Indeed, as many businesses now realize, the real gains from online B2B commerce will come not from trading but from better access to and the sharing of information,” the McKinsey Quarterly stated in March 2001. “This information might include supply-and-demand forecasts, reports of inventory levels at points along the supply chain, and market-tested predictions of the effect that the price of futures and other options will have on the availability of particular supplies, such as electricity and paper.”

The Internet and the Web bring together people who have content with people who want content. The Web allows organizations and individuals to receive and communicate information. Technology can make the communication more efficient, but technology can never write that easy-to-understand sales pitch for a product, never write that simple-to-follow installation guide for a piece of software, never write that exciting job description that makes someone want to join an organization. Technology can send an email autoresponse, but technology can never write a personal reply that really answers the question and helps close the sale. Only people – people who know their stuff and know how to write well – can do that.

Let nobody tell you that the Internet was ever anything other than a communications medium. People like J.C.R. Licklider, who dreamed up the Internet in the Sixties, had a vision. “We believe that we are entering a technological age,” Licklider wrote, “in which we will be able to interact with the richness of living information—not merely in the passive way that we have become accustomed to using books and libraries, but as active participants in an ongoing process, bringing something to it through our interaction with it, and not simply receiving something from it by our connection to it.”


Next: Part 5: Just what is publishing?
Previous: Part 3: The alternative sucks 30,000 times more

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Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8

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• Augustana College, United States
• Drury University, United States
• Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland
• Indiana University, United States
• Monash University, Australia
• University of Applied Sciences, Germany
• University of Regina, Canada
• University of Teesside, UK

"The term "bible" is now highly over-used in reference to tech books – but if it weren't, that's how I would categorize Content Critical."
Rowan Wilson, Knowledge Management Review

"Content Critical is the best non-technical book on the subject of web content that I have come across to date … For those interested in the ‘change management’ dimension of content and knowledge management, Content Critical may well become the standard text."
Andy Harrison, Content Management Focus magazine

"Content Critical is highly recommended. It belongs in every design library. It should be on the reading list of every course in Web design. Any Web designer who plans to be in business five years from now should read this book."
Ken Friedman, Design Research News

"Content Critical is amply provided with reality checks, examples, and practical ideas and suggestions … The authors have succeeded in writing a book that will appeal to both beginners and experts."
Geert Jan Kraan, Net Professional magazine, Holland

"Content Critical offers a multitude of useful tips, tactics and strategies for creating and managing your website … makes the subject as easily understandable as it is disorganized in reality."
Robin Sherman, American Society of Business Publication Editors

"Content Critical is an excellent book for academics and practitioners alike … It should be read by anyone involved in Website content management, of course, but it should also be required reading for those with responsibilities including internal or external communication (and what academic or executive does not?)"
Colin Jevons, Journal of Consumer Marketing, Australia

 

People communicate, not machines. People write content, not machines.