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Table of Contents
Thoughts on branding on the Internet
No more excuses. Build your own personal Web site. It's time to experiment.
From Web-hosting back to do-it-yourself -- the likely impact of cable modems
Quick summary of current Internet trends
Comparing on-line shopping experiences -- getting better
Upcoming chat topics -- Business on the World Wide Web
Book Review -- Everything you need to do to MOO: guide to an alternative environment for on-line discussion, business communities, and distance education
MOO wishlist -- why not add a time dimension?
Book Review -- The death of demographics
Book Review -- How easy is it to build a business by building a virtual community?
Coping with discontinuous change
Some people think of Internet branding in terms of placing banner ads at search engine sites. The true meaning of "brand" is what people think of your company -- your reputation, the relationships you have with your customers and the image that prospects have of you before you directly contact them.
For large corporations, the role of "brand" is to tie together the various messages that they present through numerous communication vehicles. In their case, logos, slogans, and consistent graphic style are important to help customers and prospects remember all these messages/images in a way that they reinforce one another. The concept of "brand" evolved from the use of mass media for marketing. It's what you are forced to do when you have little or no direct contact with your customers -- when everything goes through third parties or franchises. And for them, the Internet is just another communication vehicle.
But unless you have one of the very few Web sites that attracts millions of users a day, the Internet is not a mass medium. Also, the Internet (if you use it properly) is a way to put you into direct contact with customers. So in that case, what is the role of brand on the Internet?
For a small company, doing business solely on the Internet or mainly there, there is little need for that kind of approach. Real value comes from direct contact with the customer, from serving your audience well. You don't need banner ads, you don't need any graphics, even. You are far better off using the content of your site (well indexed at search engines) to drive traffic to your site.
Many small companies invest unnecessarily in the trappings of brand before they have established a reputation. That is a mistake. Graphics and slogans merely help to reinforce a reputation. Without a good solid reputation, the investment is wasted (or could even backfire, helping customers remember negative aspects of their experience with you).
Large corporations, with brands that have been established over many years through heavy investment, can use their clout in other media to help establish their brand to the Web, and use their branding activities on the Internet to reinforce their other advertising. But for small companies doing business mainly over the Internet, the strategy for growth can and should be very different -- starting with direct contact with the customer and learning from customers and prospects before launching any brand-building effort.
Small startups should focus on customers -- on providing excellent service and learning all they can from feedback and interactions. The service itself and the reputation built by it is the true brand -- regardless of what name they give it and what graphics they may use. If and when their business crystallizes and it becomes clear who the audience is and what the products/services are, then it might make sense to invest in formal branding activities. But not before.
For me, one of the main attractions of the Internet is the fact that you can get started on a shoestring and build an audience/community, and modify your initial plans quickly in response to customer/audience needs, and gradually build your business, perhaps eventually deciding to create a "brand."
I firmly believe in the value of content as opposed to image. A site with lots of useful content that is well indexed at search engines, will be found by people searching for those kinds of things. The limited resources of small, startup companies should be focused on developing content and providing service. Forget the graphics and the "image building". Build the reality first. Over time, get a clearer notion of what that reality is. Then, when you can afford it, and when you are ready for expansion, promote the hell out of that reality.
(This was a topic of discussion at our weekly chat session on Business on the Worldwide Web. Check http://www.samizdat.com/#chat for the edited transcripts.)
A year or two ago, if you wanted to experiment with your own Web pages on the public Internet, you had to have an account with an ISP. Yes, America Online and lots of local ISPs offered free Web space as a come-on for dial-in customers. But if you didn't already have an account, that was an enormous psychological barrier. You could get/see whatever you needed from the Web using your account at work or at school. Why should you spend money to have an ISP account in addition?
Now there are Internet Presence Providers -- Web-hosting sites -- that don't offer dial-up service and that offer free Web space to anyone and everyone. The three of the largest -- Tripod http://www.tripod.com, Geocities http://www.geocities.com, and Xoom http://www.xoom.com -- each have over a million and a half members already (and they're still growing fast). As of today, Tripod offers 11 Megabytes of Web space with a free membership; and for $3 a month, you can get 22 Megabytes and your own chat room. All of these companies have on-line tools to make it easy for you to build your pages. And since they cater to newcomers, their instructions and help files are clear and simple. You could have your first page up on the Web in less than half an hour.
When I speak about the Internet, people often ask me for advice in setting up Web sites for towns and public service organizations. They have heard of towns spending millions of dollars a year on their Web sites. They are tempted by the potential benefits, but simply don't have that kind of money. I suggest that they sign up with Tripod or Geocities or a similar service. If they need as much as 22 Megabytes (the equivalent of more than 20 copies of Huckleberry Finn), then they could splurge and spend $3 a month. If they need even more than that, then I suggest that they line up volunteers -- split the town up into areas of interest like schools, churches, town government services, etc. The bigger the town, the more areas and the more volunetters needs. Each volunteer signs up for a free Web space account. They all agree on a common look and feel. They all hyperlink to one another. And the town gets a substantial modular distributed Web site for free.
(For advice on how to build your own Web pages using Microsoft Word, see http://www.samizdat.com/lowtech.html)
Recently, talking with Dudley Howe, (a colleague at Digital, now Compaq), I mentioned that cable modems were likely to lead to an enormous appetite for Web space. Already, everybody is getting their own Web pages, and playing with digital photographs, which rapidly eat up all the space they have. With the advent of cable modems and other fast connections to the Internet, everyone is going to want to post their home videos and to experiment with multi-media effects. That could lead to enormous demand for disk space at Web-hosting sites.
Dudley pointed out that cable modems might well lead to a change in direction. Unlike with dial-up connections, your cable connection is on all the time. That means that there is nothing to prevent ordinary home users from creating Web sites on their PCs (using shareware or inexpensive Web-server software). When they do so, they are only limited by the disk space on their own machine -- so instead of paying extra monthly charges for another 10 or 20 Megabytes at a hosting site, they could use several gigabytes if they wanted to, at the one-time cost to them of their hard drive.
To me, that means that the current trend toward personal Web-hosting services like Tripod and Geocities is probably transient. It also means that the profitability of "value-added" services at Internet Service Provider sites may well decline over the next few years. Once large numbers of people have a very fast connection that remains in place 24 hours a day, and that doesn't require a second phone line, capabilities will start moving back to the desktop. Then a market emerges for intuitive, easy-to-use desktop Web servers; and for the related desktop software that will let you serve up audio, video, 3D, etc. Today, everyone wants to be a publisher. Then, everyone will want to be a broadcaster. And it will be far easier and cheaper to do it yourself than to do it with a Web-hosting Internet provider.
[For reactions, see Letters to the Editor in issue #23 and in issue #24].
Three years ago, the Web was a mechanism for automated delivery of documents. Today, it is increasingly a medium for personal interaction, building relationships, and doing business based on those relationships.
Because of that transformation -- from a document Web to a social Web -- it is now possible to build successful Web sites at low cost -- in contrast to spending a lot and getting little in return.
These thoughts lead to glimpses of an architecture that could help companies move in this new direction. This involves developing "building blocks" (combinations of hardware and software that are understandable by Web masters) and then "business services" (combinations of building blocks and services that are understandable by business people).
Such an architecture would support business models where corporations have a core/branded piece of their Web presence, surrounded by multiple audience-oriented "gray" activities, where visitors interact with one another and contribute much of the content. It would also support the development of modular distributed Web sites -- an approach which is an extension of the open systems concept, where the customer doesn't have to make a monumental choice of UNIX or NT or this software or that, but rather can mix and match to meet changing needs.
This is also the basis for success in the likely future Internet environment, in which people connect by many different devices (from powerful PCs, to NCs, to tiny gadgets) to multiple services on multiple systems and need these pieces to fit together smoothly, with the user easily accessing his/her single on-line identity from anywhere at any time.
On-line shopping is now so commonplace that for most items there are competing vendors. That means that customer service becomes the critical differentiator, and competitive pressure is leading to rapid change. Here are a few examples from my personal experience. (Keep in mind that the problems I experienced were easily correctable. By the time you read this, the policies and procedures of these companies may well have changed in response to customer feedback. My intent is not to blacklist any particular company, but rather to give a sense of the range of service being provided today.)
were clueless, but learning fast --
Ticketmaster http:/www.ticketmaster.com They have a website, but when I first connected, I couldn't buy tickets there. Rather, I had to call a local office. Then once I'd called, it is very difficult to get useful information (about the location of seats or the status of your order). They provided no way to communicate with them by email. I had to go by phone, with lengthy menus and long waits. Now you can buy tickets for many events on-line, but it's still difficult to find out about seat locations or order status. However, they do now list some useful email addresses under "Contact Info," and seem committed to solving their problems.
not yet up to speed --
Egghead Software http://www.egghead.com I agreed to pay $15 extra for "express delivery" so I would receive the software in time to give it as a gift. After a week, it still hadn't arrived. I got no response to email, and there was no easy way to track where the package was. I gave up and got the same software from a traditional store to make sure I had it in time. When the package finally arrived from Egghead (after the event), I returned it.
good and getting better --
CD Now http://www.cdnow.com I ordered several CDs, intended as a gift. When I placed the order, one of the items was out of stock, but that was not clear in the ordering process. I ordered on Saturday, and the items that were in stock were delivered the following Monday (excellent speed). The shipment included an explanation about the out-of-stock item, and when I sent email complaining that the out-of-stock status of the other item had been unclear, they responded personally and promptly.
excellent --
Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com Excellent customer service from start to finish. They email to confirm your order, then to tell you when the order was shipped and how (FedEx or UPS or US Priority Mail); and for fast-delivery options, they provide a tracking number and a URL to go to check your package's status. They also are very prompt and personal in response to email questions.
(a review of High Wired: On the Design, Use, and Theory of Educational MOOs, edited by Cynthia Haynes and Jan Rune Holmevik, U. of Michigan Press, 1998)
I first heard about MOOs and about this book through my Thursday chat sessions. We held a couple of live demos and a follow-up discussion in , trying to understand how schools and businesses could use this software. (For transcripts of those sessions, see http://www.samizdat.com/chat80.html, http://www.samizdat.com/chat81.html, http://www.samizdat.com/chat82.html)
MOOs (multi-user dimension object oriented) are friendly, playful virtual spaces which have evolved from dungeons and dragons games. Visitors to the environment not only provide content, they also shape the environment, transform it over time. With a chat room, visitors come and go and leave nothing of themselves behind, except whatever content may be captured in a transcript. With a MOO room, regular visitors can reshape the environment over time, by using and creating "objects." To me, this seems like a natural for groups which gather on a regular basis -- such as staff meetings, distance ed classes, writers groups, and group on-line therapy sessions.
Keep in mind, also, that this environment makes it relatively easy to open up multiple chat rooms, and to (with a "grapevine") to have one speaker "heard" across all the rooms. To me, this seems like a natural for meetings with breakout sessions. This might also be a mechanism for creating a series of conference rooms, and making them available in the style of a convention center (complete with meeting facilitators and objects tailored to the meetings goals). And MOOs can be interconnected in vast virtual structures -- allowing large scale collaboration and cooperation (e.g., The Globewide Network Academy links about a dozen major educational MOOs around the world).
The "objects" might be practical (like "projectors" and "recorders" to help in delivery of class material) or playful, to induce a friendly environment, that makes everyone feel "at home" and that encourages all to participate (including those who never speak up in traditional chat rooms), and also encourage them to return and look forward to returning. Such an environment evolves over time to meet the needs of the members.
This excellent book defines the bizarre and creatively exciting MOO environment, provides all the details you need to connect to an existing MOO, gives you all the commands and detailed technical information you need to build a MOO from scratch, and also discusses the broad implications of this technology and how it can be applied for education.
Today, MOO space feels like pioneer territory -- it's not particularly user-friendly. There are commands to be learned, and many MOOs are text-only (though some are accessible over the Web and have graphics, and even VRML 3D effects). But the potential feels enormous. Once the user-interface becomes easier to deal with -- point-and-click rather than command line for going from one place to another and examining things, etc. -- this could take off very quickly, just as the Web did.
I'd like to be able to use a MOO as a test structure to help story-board and plot novels, plays, and screenplays. For that I'd like to be able to add a time dimension to the rooms, objects, and players. For instance, I'd like to be able to enter all that I know about St. Petersburg in 1901 (entering lots of data from Baedekker's, etc.), then be able to place on particular streets and in particular buildings the various characters of a novel I'm writing. I'd then like to be able to adjust a meta-clock -- which sets the historical time -- forward and backward, automatically leading to changes in the physical characteristics of the people and buildings. I'd like to be able to ask for collaborative input from others around the Internet who have specific knowledge of that time period and place and to selectively delegate permission to those qualified to help in the construction. Ideally, I'd like to be able to add historical photos.
My goal is to have a virtual representation of the world of the historical novel I am writing -- for ready reference and inspiration, and basically to help keep track of all the myriad details and continually remind me of the technological and cultural context. But this same kind of structure would also be valuable for the study of history and also of classical fiction.
I could imagine experts building a series of historical MOOs that students, authors, and tourists could experience and on which they could build their own variants. I could also imagine virtual theme parks -- with multi-media effects added to the underlying historical MOO structure -- that would attract virtual tourists as well as researchers. This is where you go to experience Athens 400 BC or London 1600 or Philadelphia 1776. I could easily imagine a basic model of London 1850 being used for to build the London of Dickens, populated with objects and characters out of his novels. I could also imagine the construction of purely fictitious worlds, like Narnia and Oz -- with some features built into the base (the landscape, some basic characters, and a time-based storyline), and others modifiable by visitors, who weave their own stories and experiences there.
Much of the basic information necessary for such simulations probably already exist in the form of PC games on CD-ROM. But MOOs would provide an Internet-based collaborative environment, where many could participate in the construction and further elaboration of these worlds.
I could also imagine building MOOs for business simulation -- which provide a set of starting points in terms of location and time-flow -- and allow business people to brainstorm on-line and "see" and experience the consequences of the scenarios they are considering.
Anybody interested in pursuing this?
(a review of "The State of the Net: The New Frontier" by Peter Clemente, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1998)
If you are looking for a history of the Internet as a medium for marketing, this is the book for you. If you enjoy navigating by looking through a rearview mirror, this could become your bible. But if you are looking for insights that will help you plan your future business, look elsewhere.
This book is well researched, but the basis of the research is statistics that were half a year old before it came off the press; and the Internet and related technologies change at lightning speed. (For instance, cable modems, which the author saw as far off on the horizon (p. 42) are commonplace already in markets like Boston; and "standard consumer market PCs, which the author saw in the price range of $2500-3500 (p. 28), now sell for $1000 or less. )
First let's look at the good points, the insights and advice that are right on target:
He notes that new users exhibit very different behavior than experienced ones (p. 71), but doesn't consider why -- for instance the possibility that the Internet experience and environment changes the outlook and behavior of those who get involved, that it's not simply a matter of skill and familiarity, but also a shift in point of view, which could impact their future responses to traditional media. The author notes that a new medium does not necessarily displace preceeding ones -- book publishing continues to grow despite the advent of movies and television; but he doesn't consider how the medium changes audience expectations and hence leads to the transformation of the content of the previous media -- radio becomes talk, news, and music; the tempo and style of books shifts to appeal to readers who expect to be engaged immediately.
The biggest problem with this book is what it misses entirely.
The author seems to be more interested in statistical descriptions of users than in what users do while they are on-line and why they return to particular Web sites. The book is heavy on the demographics, and light on the unique culture and environment of the Internet.
The title has a subhead of "The New Frontier," and there are passages which acknowledge that the Internet environment is radically different from what marketers may be used to. But the author never questions his own basic assumptions -- for instance, that demographics matters here. Remember, the concept of demographics evolved in response to the opportunities presented by mass media. If you can economically broadcast a single message to large numbers of people, you must do everything you can to understand that mass audience, what messages appeal to what "kinds" of people and what vehicles are best for reaching your target "kinds" of people, and how to build a "brand" image so your various messages through various vehicles will reinforce one another.
But, as the author points out, the Internet is not a mass medium. Yes, there are tens of millions of people with the capability to use the Internet, but they do not all go to the same Web site. The audience of the typical Web site is quite small and targeted, but the author discuss the implications of that fact. When the numbers are small, statistical analysis could be a waste of time. But the opportunities to interact with, understand, and serve that audience are tremendous. Techniques, known as "collaborative filtering," (such as that offered by Firefly), let you allow your visitors to tell their preferences for particular classes of products (like music, books, and movies); and users typically are willing to spend lots of time rating the products that they have experienced in hopes of getting useful recommendations for future purchases (cf. the BookMatcher at Amazon.com). With tools like these, you can get to know your visitors based on the patterns of their tastes, rather than their age and income. Remember, demographics were a roundabout way of guessing people's interests. When you can get straight to their desires and serve them directly, demographic pigeonholing becomes irrelevant.
In addition, this book presumes that Internet users are mostly passive consumers -- a television audience with an interactive aspect, so they can ask a few questions of the information provider. But instead, what we see today is an increasingly active set of users, who are not content to consume, who are itching to publish and produce themselves -- creating millions of personal Web pages that serve as an extension of email and chat, as another way that people try to connect with other people. The Internet is not a library and not a shopping mall, basically it is an event and social phenomenon, which has enormous implications for marketing, which this book does not explore.
(a review of Net Gain by John Hagel and Arthur Armstrong, Harvard Business School Press, 1997)
The basic premise of this book is excellent -- that business success on the Internet depends on building communities in which users can talk to one another and contribute much of the content that attracts and holds still more users. But the authors don't provide the experience-based practical advice necessary to help ordinary individuals and businesses actually build communities, and they vastly underestimate the difficulty and work involved in building effective chats and forums.
While they provide revenue and cost numbers and graphs for a travel-based commuity, these numbers have no basis in practical experience. For their hypothetical model, the authors presume starting capital of $15 million and they project revenues of $618 million over 10 years. But no Internet company has ever lasted that long (the Web has only been around since 1993) nor has any been anywhere near as successful as this model.
The book contains numerous quotable quotes that could be helpful in convincing a CEO or a venture capitalist of the value and importance of on-line communities. But it's like a tantalizing description of Shangri-la, without a map or directions for how to get from here to there.
Over the last decade, we've become accustomed rapid change in business. We've acquired and learned to use the information and communication tools that can help us keep up with events, alter plans, and execute quickly. But how can we cope with the unexpected, with the discontinuous change that requires more than flexibility and scalability? That's the kind of change that leads to the fall of some corporations and the rise of others. And it takes more than a spreadsheet to recognize that it's happening.
As science has recently demonstrated, what we are used to seeing alters our perceptions. The mind anticipates what's likely to happen, and sensory input either confirms or denies our assumptions. In normal mode, anticipation of this kind means that we are ready to respond to threats and opportunities very quickly -- often acting before the related sense-data has arrived at the brain. We can operate with a minimum of input, paying minimum attention to what is happening around us, selecting only a small part of the multitude of sense data which assails us at every minute. Both as individuals and as corporations, we can anticipate rapidly, accurately, and in great detail, based on minimum sensory input. And that can be an enormous survival advantage.
This mechanism works very well when what happens next fits predictably into the pre-existing context -- a new number for the old spreadsheet. But when change is discontinuous, when something significantly new occurs, this process can get in the way of our recognizing it. We see what we expect to see, and it takes a real jolt to force us to no notice something radically new, to force us to alter our habits of perception.
Today, Internet technology is leading to enormous discontinuous changes in industries from publishing, entertainment, telecommunications, and education to automotive, transportation, and manufacturing. Some companies are already moving ahead in new directions, while others still haven't felt the jolt and awakened to the new risks and opportunities. But even the leaders face the problem of how to operate and plan in an environment where the categories that we've have depended on to understand our business have changed.
When you query a database, you only get useful results if the information was entered and formatted the right way to begin with. When the categories shift, when you need to perceive your business and your industry in new ways, there's an awkward period of adjustment, when your information systems may seem to get in the way of your understanding what is happening. Some data that is now vital may not have been captured in the past, because it didn't fit the current categories and hence it was deemed insignificant. Or it may have been stored in ways that make it difficult to find today. How can you cope with vast amounts of information that was originally structured in ways that aren't useful to you anymore? Ten years ago, that would have sounded like an impossible challenge; but today, thanks to our experience in dealing with the immense quantities of unstructured information on the Internet, we do see new and promising approaches.
For instance, with today's powerful computers and the latest indexing technology, like that in use at the AltaVista Search site, you can find the needle in the haystack, without disturbing the haystack. You can find vital information that was randomly stored, or that was organized under a categorization that is now obsolete, whether it's on your corporate network or on a public Web server in China. Tools of that kind and the new habits of perception and thought that they lead to will be very important to us over the next few years as the impact of the Internet technology and Internet styles of working plays itself out throughout the business world. (For related thoughts see http://www.samizdat.com/readrev.html#anticipation)
Venture capital and Christopher Columbus -- Venture capital and startups are not a new phenomena. They have existed in many forms in the past and I've noticed that there is a very close parallel between the current venture capital world and the age of exploration. To complete the analogy, each kingdom ran a venture capital fund and the royal family made the investment decisions. For instance, at the end of the 15'th century in Spain, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had the final say on any investment. Captains with an investment idea would develop a plan and make presentations to the court and king to get funding. Based on their evaluation of the proposal, the king and members of the court would fund all or part of the venture. The captain would retain a percentage of the profits for himself and his crew. So, Columbus' proposal was to sail west to India to simplify trade. He even got several rounds of funding to make multiple trips after the promising results of his first voyage. Each venture had a relatively small chance of success. If they did succeed, the captain, crew and investors would become fabulously rich. If they failed, the captain and the crew lost big time and the investors lost their investment. (Steve Glassman, steveg@pa.dec.com)
The energy cycle -- When you are young, you look for ways to save steps, to conserve your energy. You seek the most efficient ways to do things so you can do more. In middle age, you go out of your way to take more steps, you run up and down stairs a few more times for the exercise, or exercise with no practical purpose other than to try to burn off fat. Then in old age, once again, you try to save steps, to conserve energy, seeking the most efficient ways to do things. And what were the implications of this changing perspective to public policy and the environment as baby boomers moved from young to middle age? And what will the implications be as they move on to old age? (Richard Seltzer)
Revival of silent movies? -- Flying back from Miami, not renting the headphones and watching Home Alone 3, it occurred to me that, unintentionally, the airlines are keeping alive the tradition of silent films. Some recent movies, like Home Alone 3, are actually better without sound (lots of old sight gags and practical tricks that don't need dialogue, lots of it borrowed from silent film days). Then it occurred to me that large movie studies have great archives of silent films. Why not re-release those films for display on airline flights and also in airport waiting areas? (Richard Seltzer)
The evolutionary value of the speed of light and the distance of stars -- The Song of the Dodo by David Quammen introduced me to the concept of "island bio-geography" and the notion that evolution will only take place if there exist isolated populations. If all creatures intermingle on the same land mass, you wind up with one fairly homogeneous species, which would be at risk of extinction by a single catastrophe. When partial populations are isolated from one another by seas or mountain ranges or other physical barriers, they evolve differences which could mean that some would survive a catastrophe that others would not.
Imagine a highly intelligent species in a distant galaxy. Inhabiting a single planet and even a single solar system, with easy transportation from one planet to another, they would have evolved as a very homogeneous species and hence would be at risk of extinction from a single catastrophe. Sooner or later, it would occur to them that for the survival of their species they must create isolated populations, capable of evolving in new directions. Hence they would be likely to develop and launch self-contained space communities/vessels -- sending them forth in all directions. The populations of these vessels would not be cryogenically stored for revival on arrival at some preset destination. Rather they would live normal lives, generation after generation, evolving over the hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of years while they traveled through space. The intent would not be for them to "conquer" other worlds. In fact, they would deliberately limit or even prohibit communication with the home planet or with the other community/vessels until they were well out of the range of practical communication, for fear of interfering with the natural process of evolutionary divergence. By this stratagem they would ensure the continuance of their species and its descendants perhaps for millions of years.
I used to think it highly unlikely that mankind would ever encounter an extraterrestrial intelligent species because of the vast distances involved and the lack of motivation. Why would an intelligent species ever send out huge numbers of separate expeditions in all directions? Conquest would make no sense because at the distances involved it would take many lifetimes to ever bring back the booty. Curiosity could easily spawn a handful of expeditions, but would never justify the kinds of expenditure required to head toward every remote corner of the galaxy. And with only a few expeditions, the odds of ever coming near Earth, among all the millions of star systems, would be extremely remote.
But if survival of the species is intend a strong motivator, then it would seem likely that all intelligent space-capable species would eventually come to this conclusion and would send forth space-going communities in all directions, to let them seek their own destinies and evolve in their own separate ways. So now I would say that it is highly probable that we will encounter an intelligent extraterrestrial species -- they are out there, everywhere, and at least one such colony is probably headed in our direction... (for related ideas, see http://www.samizdat.com/readrev.html#dodo) (Richard Seltzer)
Einsteinian space-time -- (thoughts on seeing Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe). In the rushing, swirling, unpredictable and dangerous waters of a river, time-space (up-down, left-right, now-then) is not the static realm in which change takes place; rather it too is subject to change. By extension, with such dynamic processes as formation of supernovas and black holes, the shape of cosmic space-time keeps changing. So in what dimension do we measure these changes in the Einsteinian four dimensions? (Richard Seltzer)
World War II legacy -- Traumatic historical events change how an entire generation views the world, leaving a strong imprint long after. Such events are typically shocking -- overturning previous assumptions and creating new assumptions that get in the way of our recognizing and adapting to later changes. E.g., we came out of WW II with such assumptions as 1) there are just wars (good and evil are real and identifiable on a large scale), 2) people in crowds tend to act irrationally, are less than human, 3) technological and hence economic progress is inevitable and predictable. Then we came out of Viet Nam with such new assumptions as 1) good and evil are inextricably interconnected and there are no unequivocally just wars, 2) the world is running down (entropy), resources are becoming ever more scarce, and technological progress is an illusion (every step "forward" incurs a high price). We tend to continue to see the world from the perspective of the crisis that marked our youth, and we remain on the alert for a recurrence of a very similar event -- always preparing to fight the battles of the last war and unintentionally setting ourselves up to be surprised by the next generation-defining event, which inevitably will be very different from the last one. (Richard Seltzer)
from the Gutenberg Project ftp://ftp.prairienet.org/pub/providers/gutenberg/etext98/http://promo.net/pg/
(Adding dozens of new ones every month, Gutenberg has already made over 1000 etexts available for free over the Internet. These include classic works of literature and history, as well as out-of-print and little-known works by great authors. If you can, connect by ftp, rather than the Web, to get the most recent ones. Here's a list of those added from Jan. to June 1998, alphabetized by author. The file name is useful for fetching the text from the ftp site. Many of these are also available on diskette from PLEASE COPY THIS DISK for those who cannot get them themselves. For the current catalog, check http://www.samizdat.com/catalog.html or send your email request to seltzer@samizdat.com)
Project Gutenberg's Book of English Verse (Oxford)(pgbev10.txt)
Bulchevy's Book of English Verse (pgbev10.txt)
The Second Book of Modern Verse, Ed. Rittenhouse (sbkmv10.txt)
The Little Book of Modern Verse, Ed. Rittenhouse (lbkmv10.txt)
An Anthology of Australian Verse, Ed. Bertram Stevens (ozvr10.txt)
Jane Addams -- Twenty Years At Hull House (20yhh10.txt)
Conrad Aiken -- The House of Dust (hdust10.txt)
Victor Appleton
-- Tom Swift and His Air Scout (22tom10.txt)
-- Tom Swift and His Wizard Camera (14tom10.txt)
-- Tom Swift Among the Diamond Makers (07tom10.txt)
-- Tom Swift & His Aerial Warship (18tom10.txt)
Jane Austen
-- Pride and Prejudice (pandp10.text)
-- Love and Friendship, et. al. (lvfnd10.txt)
Charles Babbage -- Decline of Science in England (dosie10.txt)
Honore de Balzac
-- The Magic Skin (mgcsk10.txt)
-- The Ball at Sceaux (blsco10.txt)
-- The Firm of Nucingen (ncngn10.txt)
-- Melmoth Reconciled (mlmth10.txt)
-- Unconscious Comedians (nccmd10.txt)
-- Father Goriot (frgrt10.txt)
-- Pierre Grassou (prgrs10.txt)
-- Ursula (rsula10.txt)
-- The Atheist's Mass (athms10.txt)
-- The Elixir of Life (lxrlf10.txt)
-- The Message (msage10.txt)
-- The Purse (purse10.txt)
Helen Bannerman -- The Story of Little Black Sambo (sambo.txt)
J.M. Barrie -- Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (ppikg10.txt)
Max Beerbohm Seven Men (svnmn10.txt)
William Blades -- Enemies of Books (nmybk10.txt)
Rolf Boldrewood -- Robbery Under Arms (robry10.txt)
B.M. Bower
-- The Heritage of the Sioux (hrtsu10.txt)
-- The Flying U Ranch (flurn10.txt)
-- Cabin Fever (cabfv10.txt)
Ernest Bramah -- Kai Lung's Golden Hours (klsgh10.txt)
Eugene Brieux -- Les Avaries (dmgds10.txt)
Charlotte Bronte -- Jane Eyre (janey10.txt)
Noah Brooks -- First Across the Continent (landc10.txt)
Robert Burns -- Poems and Songs of Robert Burns (psorb10.txt)
Edgar Rice Burroughs -- The Chessman of Mars (cmars10.txt)
Ellis Parker Butler -- The Water Goats et. al. (twgts10.txt)
Hall Caine -- The Scapegoat (scpgt10.txt)
Benjamin Cardozo -- The Altruist in Politics (ltplt10.txt)
Thomas Carlyle -- The French Revolution (frrev10.txt)
Agatha Christie -- Secret Adversary (secad10.txt)
Irvin S. Cobb -- Cobb's Anatomy (Humorous Spoof) (canat10.txt)
James Bryant Conant, Editor -- Organic Syntheses (rgsyn10.txt)
William Congreve
-- The Old Bachelor (oldba10.txt)
-- The Double-Dealer (dbdlr10.txt)
-- The Way of the World (wwrld10.txt)
-- Love for Love (lv4lv10.txt)
Joseph Conrad
-- Some Reminiscences (rmnis10.txt)
-- Tales of Unrest (tnrst10.txt)
John Coulter -- North American Species of Cactus (nasoc10.txt)
George W. Crile -- Origin and Nature of Emotions (oanoe10.txt)
Charles Darwin
-- On the Origin of Species (otoof10.txt)
-- Expression Emotion in Man & Animals (eemaa10.txt)
James J. Davis -- The Iron Puddler (tirnp10.txt)
Charles Dickens -- Three Ghost Stories (3ghst10.txt)
Alexandre Dumas (pere)
-- The Count of Monte Cristo (crsto10.txt)
-- Twenty Years After (3musk10.txt)
-- Ten Years Later (2musk10.txt)
-- The Three Musketeers (1musk10.txt)
Sara Jeannette Duncan -- The Pool in the Desert (pldst10.txt)
Lord Dunsany -- If (ifdun10.txt)
T.S. Eliot -- The Waste Land (wslnd10.txt)
Gustave Flaubert
-- Herodias (hrods10.txt)
-- Salammbo (slmmb10.txt)
-- A Simple Soul (sseng10.txt)
John Galt
-- The Provost (prvst10.txt)
-- The Annals of the Parish (anapr10.txt)
Theophile Gautier -- Captain Fracasse (cptnf10.txt)
Goethe -- Poems (translated by Edgar Alfred Bowring) (tpgth10.txt)
Nikolai Gogol --Taras Bulba and other stories (taras10.txt)
Kenneth Grahame -- Dream Days (drday10.txt)
Anna Katharine Green -- A Strange Disappearance (sdspr10.txt)
Zane Grey
-- Riders of the Purple Sage (prpsg10.txt)
-- Heritage of the Desert (hdsrt10.txt)
-- Betty Zane (bzane10.txt)
-- The Spirit of the Border (sprtb10.txt)
Hans Gross -- Criminal Psychology (crmsy10.txt)
H. Rider Haggard -- Nada the Lily (ndlly10.txt)
Bret Harte -- Selected Stories (harte10.txt)
Lafcadio Hearn -- Kwaidan (kwidn10.txt)
Robert Herrick -- Lyrical Poems (lporh10.txt)
Anthony Hope -- Dolly Dialogues (dlydl10.txt)
Thomas Huxley -- Autobiography & Selected Essays (aseth10.txt)
Henry James
-- The Coxon Fund (oxon10.txt)
-- Glasses (glses10.txt)
-- The Jolly Corner (jllyc10.txt)
Jerome K. Jerome -- Paul Kelver (pklvr10.txt)
Charles Kingsley
-- The Ancien Regime (anrgm10.txt)
-- Alexandria and her Schools (alxsc10.txt)
Charles and Mary Lamb
-- Tales of Shakespeare (tshak10.txt)
-- Tales From Shakespeare (shlmb10.txt)
Sidney Lanier --Select Poems (sposl10.txt)
Andrew Lang -- R F Murray: His Poems with a Memoir (rfmur10.txt)
Henry Lawson
-- Over The Sliprails (oslip10.txt)
-- On the Track (ontrk10.txt)
Victor LeFebure
-- The Riddle of the Rhine (rrhin10.txt)
-- Chemical Strategy in Peace and War (rrhin10.txt)
Sinclair Lewis -- Babbit (babit10.txt)
David Lindsay -- A Voyage to Arcturus (vrctr10.txt)
Hugh Lofting -- Voyages of Dr. Doolittle (vdrdl10.txt)
Jack London
-- The Iron Heel (irnhl10.txt)
-- Adventure (advnt10.txt)
-- The Jacket (Star-Rover) (jaket10.txt)
-- Jerry of the Islands (jrisl10.txt)
-- The Game (tgame10.txt)
-- War of the Classes (wrcls10.txt)
-- South Sea Tales (soset10.txt)
Edna Lyall -- The Autobiography of a Slander (autos10.txt)
Nicolo Machiavelli (translated by Marriott)
-- The Prince (tprnc10.txt)
-- Valentino (tprnc10.txt)
-- Castracani (tprnc10.txt)
Thomas Malory
-- Le Mort d'Arthur Volume 2(TM#2)(2mart10.txt)
-- Le Mort d'Arthur Volume 1(TM#1)(1mart10.txt)
John Masefield -- Martin Hyde the Duke's Messenger (mhyde10.txt)
Edgar Lee Masters -- Spoon River Anthology (sprvr10.txt)
H. L. Mencken -- In Defense of Women (ndwmn10.txt)
George Meredith -- Essay on Comedy, Comic Spirit (esycm10.txt)
Alice Meynell
-- The Spirit of Place (sptpl10.txt)
-- Ceres' Runaway by Alice Meynell (crnwy10.txt)
-- The Rhythm of Life (rhyml10.txt)
-- Hearts of Controversy (hrtcn10.txt)
-- The Colour of Life, by Alice Meynell (clrlf10.txt)
-- Poems (pomam10.txt)
Edna St. Vincent Millay -- Second April (april10.txt)
Charles Oliver -- ABC's of Science (abcos10.txt)
E. Phillips Oppenheim -- The Malefactor (mlfct10.txt)
Frank L. Packard -- The Adventures of Jimmie Dale (advjd10.txt)
A. B. "Banjo" Paterson -- Saltbush Bill J.P. (biljp10.txt)
William Prescott -- History Of The Conquest Of Peru (hcpru10a.txt)
Francis Rabelais -- Gargantua and Pantagruel (ggpnt10.txt)
Ayn Rand -- Anthem (anthm10.txt)
Arthur Ransome
-- The Crisis in Russia (crrus10.txt)
-- Russia in 1919 (19rus10.txt)
H. Stanley Redgrove -- Bygone Beliefs (byblf10.txt)
Myrtle Reed -- Lavender and Old Lace (lvolc10.txt)
John N. Reynolds -- The Twin Hells (twnhl10.txt)
Mary Roberts Rinehart -- The Street of Seven Stars (sstrs10.txt)
Sax Rohmer
-- The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu (rfumn10.txt)
-- Dope (dope10.txt)
-- Fire-Tongue (firtg10.txt)
Edmond Rostand
-- Cyrano de Bergerac (In French) (cdbfr10.txt)
-- Cyrano de Bergerac (In English) (cdben10.txt)
Louis de Rougemont-- Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (advlr10.txt)
John Ruskin -- Sesame and Lilies (sesli10.txt)
W.D. Scott -- Increasing Efficiency In Business (ihdib10.txt)
Lysander Spooner -- Essay on the Trial By Jury (tbjry10.txt)
Bram Stoker -- Lair of the White Worm (lrwhw10.txt)
Lytton Strachey -- Queen Victoria (qvctr10.txt)
J.M. Synge
-- The Tinker's Wedding (tnkwd10.txt)
-- The Well of the Saints (welst10.txt)
-- The Playboy of the Western World (potww10.txt)
Booth Tarkington -- Penrod and Sam (pnrds10.txt)
James Thomson -- The City of Dreadful Night (ctdnt10.txt)
Mark Twain -- Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg (hdlyb10.txt)
John Tyndall -- Faraday As A Discoverer (fdayd10.txt)
Jules Verne -- The Mysterious Island (milnd10.txt)
H.G. Wells
-- Soul of a Bishop (sbshp10.txt)
-- Wheels of Chance/Bicycling Idyll (wchnc10.txt)
Helen Cody Wetmore -- Buffalo Bill (William F. Cody), Last of the Great Scouts (bbill10.txt)
Edith Wharton -- The Glimpses of the Moon (tgotm10.txt)
Walt Whitman -- Leaves of Grass (lvgrs10.txt)
Kate D. Wiggin
-- Penelope's English Experiences (pene10.txt)
-- Penelope's Experiences in Scotland (pesct20.txt)
Oscar Wilde
-- A Florentine Tragedy (wldms10.txt)
-- La Sainte Courtisane (wldms10.txt)
-- Salome (salme10.txt)
-- Selected Prose (slpwl10.txt)
-- Miscellaneous (wldms10.txt)
Owen Wister -- The Virginian, Horseman Of The Plains (vrgnn10.txt)
Virginia Woolf -- Night and Day (Woolf #2)(niday10.txt)
Xenophon (translated by Dakyns)
-- The Symposium (sympm10.txt)
-- The Sportsman (sport10.txt)
-- On Revenues (rvnue10.txt)
-- Polity Athenians and Lacedaemonians (pltis10.txt)
-- The Memorabilia (mmrbi10.txt)
-- On Horsemanship (hrsmn10.txt)
-- Hiero(hiero10.txt)
-- Hellenica (hllnc10.txt)
-- The Economist (econm10.txt)
-- The Cavalry General (cvlry10.txt)
-- The Apology (aplgy10.txt)
-- Anabasis (anbss10.txt)
-- Agesilaus (agsls10.txt)
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