Virtual press releases: May 19, 1997 issue of New Thinking

May 19, 1997 New Thinking:
Virtual press releases

Website content management

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May 19, 1997

Virtual press releases

By Gerry McGovern

Did you read the press release about the product that’s going to make everything faster? We’re going to get full video and animation too, and it will be out next month. All the big names have signed up to it.

Talking of the big names, have you heard the one about the merger between those two big ones, and that partnership by the other big two to jointly develop that thing that’s simply going to revolutionize everything?

What is real and meaty anymore? And when we begin to live more and more in a virtual world -- sometimes this world doesn’t seem real, but the virtual world is, well, even less real -- how easy will it be to live a step ahead of where we’re at?

“Here is our virtual future,” the press release tells us. “If enough of you like it, then maybe we’ll make it.”

There were always people who told fiction, and some made a good living out of it. But today fiction is spreading. A company has a nice website, only it’s not really a company at all, not even a virtual corporation. A product has a brochure only the product is sitting on a hard disk.

If everything becomes loose won’t we exist within an unstable environment? One which can very easily fall apart.

When we read so much fiction, or half-truths, intended truths or ambitious truths, don’t we devalue the whole notion of truth? Today, I read everything with the skeptic's eye, sniffing for a sense of what traces of value might be there.

The public might get tired of so many people selling them the future with so much frenzy. Or worse still, maybe they’ll believe the hype and hold off for that future, more powerful release.

A sizeable number of people are already hesitant of buying computers, because they’re afraid of investing good money in something that next year will be outdated. They’re afraid of getting on the money-draining upgrade treadmill.

The problem is that if too many people wait for the future, then we’ll all wait for the future. Because it’s people like them who are the future consumers, without whom the future happens a lot more slowly.

We are moving into a virtual world where few have been before, where everything is as solid as it is digital. Yes, cyberspace and the Internet are exploding. They are moving out at all angles and at great speed.

The problem with an explosion is that it is an unpredictable thing. To us who live in its eye, it is high pressure and just about understandable. For the average consumer, beta this and beta that, new this and new that, this upgrade and that add-on, and it all happening like there was no tomorrow, must all seem pretty confusing, if not downright off-putting.

It is my belief that for computers and the Internet to truly penetrate the mass market, things will have to slow down a bit. Things will have to become more solid and reliable, and the thing you buy will have to have a bit more lasting to it.

Gerry McGovern

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For computers and the Internet to truly penetrate the mass market, things will have to slow down a bit.