[deletia]
>I find commercial
>interest in the Internet a bad thing: already it has affected the
>entire world with a decision made in the US, which I consider to be
>arrogance of the grandest scale.
The Internet was a decision made in the US. Macintosh was a decision made
in the US. The telephone was a decision made in the US. I am offended by
your apparent insistance that the US isn't in a position to make these
decisions. The leader in new industries or technologies _always_ makes
these decisions. The US has always been the leader in information
technologies and I doubt that is going to change any time soon.
That commercial attempts have degraded the quality of craftsmanship is a
real complaint and one I can understand. It's also one that every industry
has made as business struggles to bring new technologies to the market.
Don't convict capitalism. Without that transition, old crafts tend to
wither and I think all of us would like to see the Internet become a
bigger, better, faster, happier place for us all to meet and interact.
>The WWW, while
>in many ways a success, still has a myriad of problems
>technically.Mosaic, while nice, is still a pretty poor browser when
>it's all boiled down, yet these are being hyped so much that the
>ignorant masses (who are the targets of ad men), beleive that the WWW
>is greate, the WWW *is* Mosaic, and that if you don't get in on it
>*now*, you'll be left out of the Information SUperHighway (tm).
Mosiac is still a first generation browser, it will improve, as will other
browsers. Ignorant Masses? The targets of ad men? I think the maybe you
misunderstand what it really takes to market a new technology. You have to
remove that ignorance. No target market is "the masses", every single one
is a group of _real_ people whom you hope will buy your product. Your
perspective really smacks of the used-car salesman's approach to sales.
That hasn't sold major commercial products in over twenty years.
Don't attack commerce because a some of the people engaging in it don't
understand it. They will fall by the wayside soon enough. Believe me, the
market will settle down and the players that remain will know how to run a
professional business that cares first about its customers.
OI is a commercial effort to create a standard in graphics description.
VRML is a community attempt to create the description language that will do
what _we_ want. In the long run, all commerce must meet the needs of the
community, and I don't see any inherent conflict in trying to work with the
industry to reach our goals. I think that makes more sense than working
against it.
That's my two cents. I think we have some more questions to answer about
_what_ OI can do for us and what we'll need to change or add. But I'd like
to get past the political and religious differences we might have and on to
the technical considerations. We all share some version of a common
vision. I'm looking forward to seeing it happen.
-j
-- Joe Andrieu *Internet Construction Ahead* andrieu@presence.com V.P. of Marketing voice: 818-405-9971 Presence Information Design fax: 818-405-1817