For his performance in Network (1976), Peter Finch became the first Actor in a Leading Role to ever receive his Oscar posthumously. It is indescribably ironic that Finch played Howard Beale, an imminently hasbeen news anchorman, who decides to commit suicide on the air… for the ratings.
At the peak of drama, Beale seizes the microphone and delivers the following (now-famous) speech:
I would define “webmaster” as anyone who creates and maintains Web sites and Web pages.
In only the last few years, blogs have fundamentally transformed the nature of “webmastering”. It’s not just that making and updating sites is easier today than ever before because of blogs. What blogs have done that is so very special and important is they have made it possible for regular folks to command the attention of tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of people everyday. Before the advent of blogging, to get a lot of traffic, you either had to buy it, win it from the search engines with SEO “tricks” or participate in complex link trading schemes with other webmasters. To be successful by any of these methods, you had to have significant money, experience or both. But today blogs offer an alternative method for the acquisition of enormous amounts of traffic… that is, essentially, FREE and REALLY EASY
A blog is a lot more than an “instant Web site”. The benfits of blogmastering, over keeping other types of Web site, go far beyond the fact that you don’t have to worry about building the site itself. It’s great that all the basic, “getting started” types of things that used to occupy the webmaster’s time for days or even weeks — the making of the site, the linking together of individual pages, the visual design, the creation of navigational structures — are all taken care of from the very first moment you “turn on” your blog. But the miraculous power of blogs to acquire traffic does not relate to that. It comes from the ways in which blogs are designed to interact with other blogs and with third parties.
We’ve come a long way from seashells and colored beads.
When the de Medicis invented banking in the 14th Century, they veered us irrevocably into the realm of the abstract.
“Value” remained valuable, even in theoretical, projected circumstances, and risk analysis was born. With it, the concept of interest, and — miraculously — so was born the way to make money on money.
The effects of credit on our lives remains a divisive subject. Being able to borrow against value can make your dreams come true. But it can also wreck your life.
But this is not about credit.
Money and economics have influenced every aspect of our lives, since long before the advent of the Web. In the beginning, electronic commerce enjoyed the pre-existing electronic infrastructure of the credit card networks. It was a great fit. Some XX billion dollars changed hands that way in 2005 on planet Earth.
To pay for something online with a credit (or ATM) card has become synonymous with electronic commerce.
But something’s wrong.
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