Breaking The Code With Neal Stephenson, Page 8
Breaking The Code With Neal Stephenson, Page 8
ATN: You mentioned that you want to get hooked in so you can experience the Web and kind of cruise around. Is that something that's going to happen soon, do you think?
Stephenson: I don't care to fool around with the Web until I have enough bandwidth that I won't find it irritating. I'm not easily impressed by the good things it does, and I'm quick to be irritated by its failings. I know that I'm going to be really irritated if I start trying to browse the Web at the low bandwidth my crappy telephone service is capable of providing.
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ATN: You made a comment before that you don't think very highly of television, and you think the Net is going to end up just as full of garbage.
Stephenson: If the Net works right, it'll be like the publishing or music industry. If I go downtown and visit Sub Pop Records, I can probably find a room full of demo tapes that people have sent in hoping to get a record deal, most of which probably aren't so hot but some of which are probably brilliant. And likewise, I can go to any publisher and they've probably got thousands of manuscripts sent in unasked for, most of which are not very good, some of which are very exciting. You don't have that in television and movies because it's so expensive and requires the cooperation of so many people and so much equipment to create art. Consequently, most TV has to go through a multi-level process of review by executives, accountants, and focus group analysts. So, if the world of interactive media is organized along the lines of television, where it's very expensive and everything's got to be treated like a new business venture, then there'll be a lot of garbage on it. On the other hand, if it's organized in such a way that anyone can create interactive media as easily as picking up an electric guitar or rolling a sheet of paper into a typewriter, then there will be a profusion of material, some of it not very good, some of it great. And the condition that you have to have for that to happen is that everybody, whether rich or not, part of a large group or not, has to have access to the means of production. From what I've heard and understand, the Web may be the answer to that. That may be how it happens. So, yes, I suspect there will be a lot of garbage out on the Web. But that doesn't bother me as long as there's some good stuff, too. Nobody's forcing you to click on the garbage.
