If it's etched in stone it's probably a fossil. Sour grapes, annotated. By William Paul Fiefer (home) [main menu]

You can be your own worst enemy. The evidence is on this page. I should have called it a shrine to corporate blindness or the ode to departmental politics. Instead, I decided it was my lesson in humility. I was foolish enough in 1992 to think the Internet and the Web were valuable business tools. And I tried convincing more than half the Fortune 100 and every major regional organization to think likewise. The task was isometric. I should have known that the fast track to consulting success is to find the client's comfort zone and lock on to it like a cruise missile. If someone thinks of implementing a new distributed system in an old legacy language, pamper them with legacy programmers. If someone considers building a strategic network with proprietary protocols rather than TCP/IP, echo their rationale. If someone believes the Windows desktop will never be extended by the Web browser, evangelize that vision. I've seen this endorsement of stagnation so many times I've lost count. I call its proponents the "okeydoke specialists" and their punch line is as old as until now. Clients hire them to improve their sites and they reply, "Okeydoke." Then nothing constructive happens. There is no shortage of that type of work. I'll do better by you. I'll help you when you don't want answers out of cans. I'll shape your content and show you how to share knowledge over computer networks. If you're launching a digital publishing system or creating an online information complex, I'll fix flaws before they become commitments. I've been here before; I've made the mistakes and know what you must avoid. You won't hear what you want to hear, you'll hear what you need to hear. And I promise that won't include a single okeydoke. The key to the seven exhibit format (A – G) in this gallery follows.

The Seven Sins
I once declared:
I actually offered this advice, verbatim, to a client.
What happened:
The client actually replied like this, paraphrased.

Exhibit A – Gluttony I once declared: Content is king. Content is the strategic landing site of this emerging market. First the broadcast towers go up, then the airwaves carry programming. We're at the commercial birth of a new mass media. Throughout media history, content providers have ruled over format providers. Kodak's film business is big; Columbia Pictures is bigger. TDK's tape business is big; Sony Recording is bigger. Maxell's diskette business is big; Microsoft is bigger. At times, this is not even an industry issue. Picasso's art is worth more than any firm providing oil paint. One reason for this dominance stands out: the value of the content is independent of its raw materials. Your monochrome photos are on a substrate hardly less expensive than Ansel Adams's. Try trading yours for his. You belong in the content business. What happened: Client said I had fallen prey to consuming my own hype. [header] Exhibit B – Sloth I once declared: The software and hardware comprising an Internet-attached server function as prepress, press, and distribution channel. This channel is global, fast, inexpensive, and supports a wide variety of media. As more users, firms, and online services connect to the Internet, the audience becomes universal. And, as Internet transmissions are secured against unwanted access, the content moved within it becomes unrestricted, and will include privileged corporate and financial transactions. What happened: Client mentioned a cold day in Hell when anyone would want to move money over the Internet. [header] Exhibit C – Covetousness I once declared: Go on line as an information provider; build and audit your online traffic; offer display space and other services at your site for a fee; and tell others how it's done. Nurture and audit your market. Counting logins to your server is relatively easy. A well-designed program can keep track of duplicate logs. So, when you go to an advertiser, you'll present verifiable numbers for audience size. This is no different the Audit Bureau of Circulation or Arbitron. Building your audience is almost entirely contingent on two things: the quality of your site information and site links, and the quality of your self-promotion. Sell promotional space to others. The Net has a rich tradition of allowing a diversity of expression. As a result, there are no limitations on liquor or tobacco ads, no restrictions on firearms or ammunition ads, and no tight legal requirements for placing tombstone-style financial ads, legal and medical solicitations, and solicitations of assorted other services. This, too, is not the appropriate forum for exploring the scope or legal requirements of this market. The market, however, is clearly there. You'll draw income through selling existing services, selling or leasing programming, selling advertising, and consulting on how you perform these services. This is analogous to: building a broadcast tower and transmitting; building and auditing an audience; market the audience you've audited; offer advertisers airtime; and tell others how it's done. What happened: Client asked for the source of my mindless ideas. [header] Exhibit D – Anger I once declared: The future will involve producing televised and videotaped content, radio and recorded content, graphic-intensive Web pages over high-speed links, real-time interactive content over high-speed links, encrypted content, anonymizing services for public and private polling, and demographics studies and Arbitron-style rating systems. What happened: Client wanted to know if I thought I was Ray Bradbury. [header] Exhibit E – Envy I once declared: One dominant feature is the lack of overlapping skills in the major groups involved in a Web publishing undertaking. The creative end does not know how to professionally deal with, and make specific recommendations to, the technical end. And the technical end does not know how to professionally deal with, and make specific recommendations to, the creative end. Both participants are essential to the entire process, yet neither has an envoy or translator who bridges their communications and skills gap. A similar situation exists in print publishing. Writers and artists depend on printers but generally know little of the print process. Printers, of course, can't live without something to print, yet know little of the creative process. The job structure of publishing has been heavily stratified so points of mutual skill and understanding exist. The copy editor and graphics designer, for example, have a foot in both the creative and technical ends of print publishing. No equivalent liaison positions exist in Web publishing. (If you reflect on broadcast communications, you'll see the same stratification. Dan Rather is not expected to know the technical end of television transmission. He is expected to know how to communicate with impact through a camera. Rather's producer is responsible for understanding both journalism and broadcasting.) What happened: Client decided the Web was overrated as a content medium because none of their competitors used it. [header] Exhibit F – Pride I once declared: Your clients must understand that you are offering them editorial and publishing services enhanced by, but distinct from, technical services. You should present Web publishing to a senior corporate editor, media specialist, or public relations manager rather than to an IS manager, who may view our service as overlapping existing internal computing resources. You do not compete with computing specialists. Rather, you supplement, or serve as, existing media specialists. What happened: Client said it was foolish to explain the value of the Web to people outside I.T. [header] Exhibit G – Lust I once declared: The Internet as we know it now and as it has existed for the last 25 years will be gone in two years. And I believe that rather than that being a disadvantage, this means it's more important than ever before to get connected to the Net, to learn as much as possible about how it works, to learn to use its services. The reason is that the Net is going to be privatized in a major way. Not only will it be turned over to the administration of a few large corporations, Ameritech among them, but its services and performance will be repackaged by commercial vendors and sold as the networking platform to corporations worldwide. The commercial software vendors will privatize a publicly developed network software package. The vast majority of commentators and reporters covering this information superhighway, the I-Way, the InfoBahn, what ever buzzword you want to apply to it, have been blinded by the faddishness of the whole thing and fail to see the issue through a commercial perspective. Commerce cuts little slack for any thing or anybody and the Internet is no exception. Businesses everywhere are going to make the public Internet a private, highly customized possession. Unlike the press and the public, business sees through the hype about the potential of the Internet. Business I.T. departments see clearly that the Net is a networking protocol, a tool, an interoperable standard. The Internet is easily the largest applied computing research project ever undertaken. The network theory underpinning the Internet directly challenges the commercial products of every network operating system vendor. The primary virtue of this networking system is that any vendor who follows its guidelines can connect its equipment to anything else provided by any vendor on the Internet. What corporate I.T. departments consider as desirable features for computer networks – interoperability, multiple guards against failure, full two-way communications – were built into TCP/IP from the start. While TCP/IP was effectively creating a digital United Nations over the last 25 years, commercial, corporate computer networking became a multi-billion dollar enterprise. It's not unusual for a Fortune 500 company to spend tens of thousands of dollars per user on proprietary networks. And these networks call for costly support them and have high direct costs to the firms that use them. Despite this, it's a continual task for these firms to make sure that all of the equipment they've spent richly for continues to work smoothly together. This is a Balkanized networking system. But TCP/IP networks, unlike the networks provided by any commercial, proprietary vendor, are highly capable, full-featured networks. Machines can exchange files. Machines can control each other and request that work assigned to one machine actually be done by another. TCP/IP networks come with electronic mail services and a worldwide mail distribution system. So what we all see now as the Internet "out there" will become, very quickly, the Internet "in here," at home, local, contained for the most part within corporate campuses, and proprietary to a great degree. The Internet as you and I know it now, and as people have known it for the last 25 years, is going to be replaced by dozens, maybe hundreds of proprietary Internet clones. These various clones will be implemented in corporate networks. What happened: Client said there would never be a business case for trying to control the Internet or make proprietary use of it.

© Copyright 1992-2008, William Paul Fiefer (yamada@prairienet.org), all rights reserved. You incur specific legal obligations under the terms of my copyright and little else under my privacy policy. This page is made possible by maple.sugar.buddha™ and translated into English by my Mom. Sweet enlightenment!™ Last updated 01 January 2008.