Re: htmlai?

> this applies equally to html and W3C and WAI are supported fairly liberally
> by 'commercial interests'

I suspect it is the cost of production point to which this really applies.
What I was trying to say here is that once "web" content gets taken over
by the mass media, it will naturally aim low in terms of the comprehension
skills of its audience, and therefore that keeping material easily 
comprehensible is a main streak requirement for the sorts of media that
can only really be produced by large organisations.

I would actually argue that HTML, in its origins, did significantly
undermine existing commercial interests, but the sorts of features you
like are in there because they are what the commercial interests need,
not what is needed for peer to peer communication.  I'd further say
that W3C was largely flying in the face of commercial wants by stressing
structure, and its separation from presentation.  Most commercial interest
is in terms of vehicles for one way influence of humans, whereas the W3C
position favours a much more balanced relationship, and favours machine
to machine communications, which would permit consumers to make much
more objective decisions, and internal technical communication, where
accurate commuication, rather than influence, is needed.

I suspect that many of the company representatives on the W3C are their 
strongest technical people, not their most business aware people.  One
indicator of this is the failure of member home pages to comply with
the standards that their experts are helping to form.

If HTML were aligned with commercial wants, the majority of HTML would
be written according to the intended semantics; in practice less than
5% is, which strongly indicates that the market demand much better aligns
with PDF's intended market.  On the other hand, technology for streaming
audio is largely aimed at the same, popular music, market as CDs and
commercial radio.

Although I didn't say so, it is fairly obvious, from the way that it is
funded, that W3C is not going to do anything that undermines the existing
film and music industries, but that was the cost of production point.

I think what you are really talking about is a form of redistribution of
wealth.  I don't think that can happen directly in internet terms;
I think it can only happen as the result of the implementation of 
micropayments, allowing the donation of electronic cash that can 
buy this sort of resource.  Anything else would be just too open to
fraud.

Received on Monday, 7 May 2001 15:47:38 UTC