Dad With Teeth

Just your standard alphabet soup

So here are my four paragraphs of glory. OK, perhaps not glorious, only lustrous (or is that blusterous?).

I realize we shouldn’t get lost in the details, but man-oh-man the “Internet Standards, Protocols, and Languages” article read like a random letter generator. We have ANSI, ISO, IAB, IETF, IRTF, UN/EDIFACT, NII/GII, OBI, CEFACT, ICANN, SEI, CERT, NSS, FIRST, ICSA, CSRC, CSTC, CIAC, FedCIRC, OSI, TCP/IP, FTP & TELNET, NNTP, HTTP & HTTP-NG, SGML& HTML, XML, DOM& DHTML, XHTML, Java, POP, IMAP, ACAP, SMTP, PEM, MIME, MOSS, S/MIME, MSP, PGP, S-HTTP, SSL, SET,STT, SEPP, SET, WAP, WML, and WTLS. (“Excuse me, I’d like to buy a vowel.”) I felt like I was reading Brian Winston all over again. But no matter how arcane the content, the overriding point was clear: The internet is a chaotic mess and you need to thoughtfully choose how you are going to utilize the technology available. Decisions need to be made not only on the potential audience interest in the content, but how that content will be distributed and displayed.

The two thoughts I had while reading the chapter were: 1) How has the technology changed since this was written (many of the references were seven years old.) and 2) With the push to common standards, doesn’t this open the door wider for attacks on the system? One of the reasons I love my Mac at home is I don’t have to worry much about viruses. Not because the OS is un-hackable, any operating system is vulnerable if you spend enough time whittling on the code. No, the reason there are few if any viruses written is when there are so few machines it is not worth the time and effort to infect them. Even WEP standards seem vulnerable. We seem to be one big virus away from catastrophe. Internet maven Jonathan Zittrain thinks it's not a matter of if, but when. He told NPR’s “On the Media” this week that “unless we act now, a ‘9/11 moment’ for the Internet could result in a Patriot Act-like backlash that would stifle all sorts of e-innovation.” You can hear is interview here. He is a bit thick with the hyperbole, but I don’t think he is crying wolf.

On the other side of the class reading continuum, I found Nathan Shedroff’s article on Unified Design Theory wonderfully provocative. I chose to download the pdf file because I have such a difficult time reading long articles on my computer screen. Therefore, I feel I missed out on his profound integration of design and content. But I found his writings on the integration of Information Design, Interaction Design, and Sensorial Design did a very good job of concisely presenting a model of product creation I can use on a daily basis. Over and over again I found myself nodding my head in agreement to points he would present. I have found in documentary production, graphic design and animation that, “Information Design does not replace graphic design and other visual disciplines, but is the structure through which these capabilities are expressed.” As we define and refine our class project it will be critical to understand our audience; what their needs, abilities, interests, and expectations are; and how to reach them.

So in the spirit of clarity, and a fear of trying to accomplish too much at once, I will end this by reminding myself that to be successful with our web site we will need to insure that we have created a wonderful experience for our audience. Look, I did it in four paragraphs, if you don't count the opening sentence.

posted by Drew Keller @ Monday, January 16, 2006