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| April 17, 2000 | ||
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| CYBER CHATTER Hack Theory By Arun Katiyar
Let's take the case of journalism on the Net. Although there is no school of thought (heck, the Net isn't old enough to have a school of anything), the general belief is that attention spans are falling, connectivity isn't exactly cheap and bandwidth hogs ought to be excommunicated, so let's make the download painless. If your words are few and the ideas plenty, you've begun to make sense as an online journalist. Just because the Internet is a sea of information doesn't mean you can leak more into it: you should understand that there is no shortage of content on the Net. Steve Crocker of ULCA, one of the fathers of the Internet, made it a point to encourage his colleagues to send timely rather than well-written and well- thought-out notes. He wanted to see philosophical views without examples, queries without attempted answers and techniques without background notes. He said, "These standards (or lack of them) are stated explicitly for two reasons. First, there is this tendency to view a written statement as ipso facto authoritative, and we hope to promote the exchange and discussion of considerably less than authoritative ideas. Secondly, there is a natural hesitancy to publish something unpolished, and we hope to ease this inhibition." Over the years, the Net has more or less evolved around this philosophy. People love to discuss ideas, exchange views, talk their heads off and go deeper than downloading a gigabyte of someone's take on life which is going purple with a hint of rigor mortis. The flow and exchange of ideas is the essence of the Net. People often ask, "What's so different about online journalism?" It's not about adding hyperlinks or using tony words to make your prose shine. It's about how quickly you publish -- and then wait for the community to react and respond. The Net is the only mass medium known to us that has the ability to talk back in real time. As contributors to the Net, maybe it's time to talk less and listen more, and then break the rules. COM, TRY THIS AND THIS STEAL-A-DEAL IN-FORM Arun Katiyar is the chief operating officer of India Today Group Online. His e-mail address is akatiyar@india-today.com |
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Rules
are meant to be broken. Codes are more rigid. That's why computers work in
fairly rigid ways -- they rely on code. But humans work with rules and
these can be broken -- nay, they need to be broken.