Re: [h2o-discuss] Re: Electronic publishing

["Jon Garfunkel" <garf@look.boston.ma.us>]

James Johnston wrote:

>Nonetheless, central Web sites like Fatbrain offer several advantages.

With the spread of open standards and open systems, it's going to be tough
to be an information company one day-- when you get down to it, the only
thing you own is your brandname. Here's my dissection:

>First, the general public seems to prefer going to a single Web site for
such >things rather than searching the Internet.

I think I can restate this better: customers want organizing websites, so
that's what Fatbrain and the other portals are attempting to do. As we usher
in properly indexable documents using common metadata (cf. XML, RDF), we
should expect services to start offering gateways to these databases.

>Second, the Fatbrains of the Internet will have advantages in billing and
>collection.

To this, I had made the point that direct electronic payment systems will be
in place to allow person-to-person transactions.

>Third, the public may feel that a Fatbrain is more trustworthy than an
>individual's Web page, just as it seems to trust an auction on
>eBay more than it does an individual's auction.

Yes, eBay auctions are generally authentic... though auctions are a
different creature from publishing. I think that trust can be derived from
public comments as well, no matter where the document is stored.

> Fourth, Fatbrains can offer reviews from other readers, so the potential
> buyer can get a sense of what he is buying.

That's why we need a standard for web-annotation services.

Come to think of it, another key point of publishing is that you can get a
person/company to notarize that you wrote a manuscript at a certain point in
time. I assume Fatbrain can do this now. You should expect digital
certificate-based notarization services someday... like echecks, they are
dependent on a large-scale Public Key Infrastructure.

So the component technologies are all on the horizon; one day we shall be
able to mix and match without tying ourselves to one particular vendor's
system.

Jon
Route 128, Mass.