BYTE.com > Tangled in the Threads > 2001 > May
Telling A Story
By Jon Udell
May 24, 2001
(Telling A Story
: Page 1 of 3 )
Almost all the work I do is virtual and distributed, but lately I've been working in a project that's unusually virtual, as part of a team that's radically distributed.
During the final years of my Byte tenure, I was able to deploy Web, mail, and news servers that -- in various ways I describe in my book -- helped me and my colleagues work together more effectively. Nowadays, as an independent consultant, I have a lot less influence over the infrastructure deployed by the companies I work with.
That, I'm starting to think, may be a good thing. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter whether I can show that an intranet/extranet news server is a cheap, compatible, and secure way to turbocharge team communication. That's true, but such infrastructure is not pervasive. When I face reality, I must admit that cyberspace really only guarantees two ubiquitous resources: e-mail and the readable Web. For the time being, any viable collaborative solution has to make the most out of these available resources. And thereby hangs a tale, but first I need to explain what I mean by the readable Web.
The Readable Web
E-mail is a subject I return to obsessively because it's so fundamental. The readable Web is equally fundamental. The term sounds odd because we hear more commonly, nowadays, about the writeable Web or the two-way Web -- an environment in which everyone can produce as well as consume Web content.
The Web began in this state of grace, soon fell from it, and has recently been trying to find its way back. It's been a hard road, frankly. Key writeable-Web technologies, such as WebDAV and WYSIWYG HTML editors, have emerged but not yet gained the traction they deserve. Lately, I've been wondering if there's a reason for this. Could it be that, despite Tim Berners-Lee's dream (and mine), the writeable Web is not the natural state of affairs? That, in fact, it is appropriate for consumers of Web content to outnumber producers? And that tools and technologies are not the major constraint on the production of Web content?
Recent history suggests that the answer to all of these questions is probably yes.
BYTE.com > Tangled in the Threads > 2001 > May
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