The Mirror of Obliteration

Special to CNET News.com: "IE's future uncertain with new Windows" by Mary Jo Foley: But as it looks right now, Microsoft isn't planning to release a stand-alone beta of IE 6.0. And it is uncertain whether or not Microsoft will make even the final IE 6.0 code available as a separate, downloadable or CD-installable product. Instead, sources said, Microsoft is strongly considering making IE 6.0 only available as part of Whistler. A Microsoft representative declined to talk about IE 6.0, saying it was "too early to talk about features or deliverables." A Microsoft representative said later that the company has no plans to make IE 6.0 available only as part of Whistler. "It's business as usual," she said, adding that Microsoft also will make IE 6.0 Beta 1 available for download separately. But some at Microsoft are arguing IE should not be the default interface for all the flavors of Whistler Microsoft is developing, according to sources.
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MSN Explorer, the most recent version of which Microsoft launched last fall, looks like a combination browser and portal. MSN Explorer integrates Hotmail, MSN Messenger, MSN Calendar, MSN eShop Windows Media Player and MoneyCentral into a single interface. MSN Explorer competes with America Online's AOL 6.0. (Foley)

Mary Jo Foley's article for CNET seems to suggest that Microsoft is moving in the same direction with its Internet Explorer 6.0 browser that we have seen already with the Netscape 6 browser. While the advent of the Netscape 6 browser was inconvenient - writers and artists had the choice of either re-programming their work or adding another caveat to the already-complicated reading/viewing requirements - the prospect of a more uniform browser standard (W3C) was welcome to them.

But the Netscape 6 browser had ambitions well beyond better standards-compliance in its function and design. First, the Netscape 6 browser interface is designed with a particular user in mind. That "user" is the Web consumer. The early browsers (with the notable exception of AOL) were designed as tools: in the most elementary form, they provided us with an "onramp" to the Internet. Once there, it was assumed, we would have the freedom to explore a docuverse, a multiverse, the book that is the book - the whole enchilada.

The feature many of us cherished most in the early browsers was the bookmark - allowing us to revisit our own discoveries. Netscape 6 assumes that it already knows what we want to do today - we want to buy things, check on movie stars, and get the sports statistics. If we forget for just a few moments that we are captives in an advertising environment, we are quickly reminded by unsolicited, pop-up screens that suggest we download the Netscape calendar or sign up for a Netscape credit card. And, with a browser interface cluttered with these gratuitous assists, we find that our explorations are terribly burdened. Netscape 6 is a cumbersome marketing juggernaut, lumbering across the net, always steering us to the main highways, where its bulk can be accommodated. It is no longer a simple tool that opens a virtual space to the reader/viewer.

Furthermore, the "user-as-consumer" is not envisioned as needing to "create" anything much. The Netscape 3/Communicator version browser came bundled with a clunky, but usable, HTML authoring software, Composer. But the Netscape folks have not seen fit to update this software at all, assuming that the user has no need or desire to do any more than create a personal Web page from a pre-designed template. Sites of any interest, apparently, should now be constructed by corporations with legions of professional programmers who would have no use for the "recreational" compiler.

The browser-providers have, in essence, withdrawn the invitation to the "user" to become a part of the creation of the Web; instead, they want customers to receive the information they deem appropriate and buy the products they advertise. Pushing ideas, things, and services on the passive consumer is one communications model - but it has hardly been a healthy environment for art or literature. Web writers and artists need tools that will be fluid, flexible, and elegant - not rigid templates for making home pages. Moreover, they need some assurance that the viewing platform will not be so loaded with commercial features that the artistic content is obscured.

The drift of the Web from a wide-open playground for amateurs to a marketplace dominated by professionals might well have been anticipated. As the technology evolved in film and television, much the same thing occurred. In the 1920s there were hundreds of independent film companies operating on a shoestring and a single camera. In the early days, too, television studios were eager for product; if you had a good idea, you could get some studio time and broadcast. Film-as-art and videoart have survived, but we don't often find them on the major networks or in commercial theaters. While Netscape and Microsoft probably will not monopolize the channels of distribution in quite the same way, they can, and are, manipulating the platform of access. As it is, they provide the browsing capability for a majority of Web users. To the extent that the possible audience for Web literature must access this work with a tool designed to function best as a festooned shopping cart, artistic creativity is compromised.

Now, the Web commentators are saying that Microsoft will follow the lead of Netscape with its next-generation IE products. (See above. Microsoft, of course, has always seen its mission as directive - and the MSN Explorer is the epitome.) Business users will access the Web with one suite of products; everyday folks will have a "lite" version - carefully constructed to keep the consumer/user focused on those aspects of the Web that marketers assume to be in demand.

The Web has and continues to change its nature - growing toward something we cannot yet envision (although there are plenty of prophets). For the last five years, the Web has been a difficult but delightful space for a fascinating new literary form. Working within the constraints of technological change, writers and artists publishing on the Web have developed a surprising, new literary syntax of image, sound, text, movement, and structure.

But the shape of things ahead suggests that the environment of the WWW may begin to discourage individual artists. HTML for the new W3C standards requires a high level of sophistication and the acquisition of new coding skills. Thus, the entry threshold is very high for new digital writers who are not fluent in computer programming. Then, no matter how we configure the filters on our own machines, we cannot prevent the possibility that the reader's browser will be popping up ads for car loans and pet foods in the midst of our climactic literary moment. Since the browser IS the platform, the ability to generate content for it, as well as the character of its graphic design, fluidity, and construction, determine what gets created. And what has already been created on and for browser technology is about as fragile as writers and artists (simple souls) can happily tolerate.

Recto / Permanence / Impermanence / Alteration / Obsolescence / Obliteration / Verso