The Post-Apocalyptic Web
By Lincoln D. Stein
Sorry, I can't help it. The January 2000 edition of Web Techniques is too much of a temptation. Even though I witnessed Bob Metcalfe publicly eating his InfoWorld column on the day that the Internet didn't collapse as he had predicted, I'm going to yield to the temptation and try to predict the major trends in Webdom over the next year or so, if not the new millennium.
The Y2K Bug Will Not Bring Down Civilization
I can safely make this prediction, because if the Y2K bug really does bring down telephone, power, air travel, and the Internet, this column is not going to get printed. Even if it is printed, we'll all be too busy running from the clouds of radioactive fallout from failed Russian nuclear power plants to have time to read this prediction.
I feel much better now, do you?
Advertising Banners Will Fade Away
When I wrote a column called "The Web Is Not TV" (Web Techniques, September 1999), claiming that advertising revenues were not going to sustain the Web in the long term, I must have hit a nerve. More readers sent me emails in response to that column than for any other I've written. One reader contended that advertising is an integral part of its author's artistic concept, and that it should be considered a copyright infringement for ad blockers to filter it out. Others argued that the Web would sink back into the dark ages of amateurish page design and broken links if advertising revenues were cut off.
