As none of those have materialized, I feel I should play a few notes about the maternal impulse behind all forms of creation. You are staring at my own personal "Baby," after all. I think she's cute, but your opinions seem decidedly mixed.

I am sure that if you polled the writers here, you would get a very interesting portrait of what kind of "mother" I am.

They play the part of "fathers," you see, planting the seed; but the delivery is completely my responsibility. And like most fathers, they enjoy not having to go through the labor pains, but also resent how closely I clutch the child to myself. They most certainly think there is something lurid in the way I feed her, but wouldn't take any sum to have to endure the gestation or the post-partum depression(s) I undergo after delivery. (That I have to "deliver" every single week only adds to the adversion.)

And heaven forbid that someone should comment that the child resembles me!

Everyone's A Critic

If you're interested at all in the "conventional wisdom" of building websites, it has some stated maxims:

1. *Every Page* should have content
2. There MUST be a Table of Contents
3. You should design your site in such a way that visitors are encouraged to stay

Meanwhile, sites that get many more visits than this one, ignore those maxims all the time. Look at the splash-page for Feed. Find any content?

They ignore the maxims. If you want to succeed on the web, you should, too. Then go out and get a HUGE corporate sponsor, with deep pockets, to make you a webhold name. Content is not king; PROMOTIONAL BUDGETS are King. Ask Microsoft(SLATE) or Hambrecht & Quist, Adobe Systems, and Apple Computer(SALON.)

Because I have been the designated 'Net publishing critic over at Suite 101, I probably surf to more sites than most people. And what I've been finding is that the sites that I actually like are all different, and I like them for different reasons. Some I like because of their raw appeal and brashness. For example, last night I surfed over to Generation neXT(because of the similarity in our names) and had one thoroughly good time. I found this site fresh, and doing what some of the web-gurus say this phenom is all about: building community. It doesn't happen often enough. We've hyped WebTricks to death on this site, but it's *only* about entertainment(I like that, too.) And I believe that part of the reason that entertainment out-sells community building is the rush for the capitalist paradigm here, of which I am as guilty as anyone else.

Follow The Money

Whenever I sit and talk with other "web professionals" --- people who work almost exclusively on sites --- the conversation invariably turns to number of hits, are you making money yet? what business model will ultimately split the Gordian Knot of "E(lectronic)-Commerce" which we shall invariably all emulate like lemmings following our predescessors over the proverbial cliff?

But that sure as hell isn't why I came here! I came here to have fun! To publish the kind of Electronic(Web) magazine that people would want to come back to, day in and day out, because I'd "collected" a group of writers who would surprise, incite and inspire.

But, even for me, that ideal has gotten lost in the competition for eye-balls, the cost of producing this site, and the desire to remunerate the writers for their loyalty, their finesse and their prose. (Yup, writers want to eat, too. They enjoy paying rent.)

The G is in the process of forming an Editorial Board so that I can find a way to keep the writers here...

You Schnooze, You Lose

In the last issue of Red Herring magazine, economist Paul Krugman predicts that if you use the term "information society" twenty years from now people will look at you like you're an idiot.

But pick up the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times(see the CyberTimes section), or any purveyor of the latest "conventional wisdom" and you'll read that Inter-, Extra-, Intra-Net, revenues are on a fabulous growth curve into the middle of the impending next century.

Who's right?

My suspicion is that Boom Times won't last forever. Economies have a way of "correcting" themselves. Human beings run both governments and corporations, so SOMEBODY should add chance, human error, and human caprice into their pristine math equations: both Krugman and the writers at the Olympic WSJ.

What does this have to do with web magazine you are reading right now, and our variations on on-going themes? A lot. Even as our flag flies defiantly and triumphantly here, we try to not to lose sight of what a frontier medium this remains. As yet, unproven. Constantly(depending on your ISP, our server, the browser wars, modem speeds, vaporware) unreliable.