More on Web Subscriptions and Micropayment, plus Intelligent Agent Returns
I got an email this morning which said, in part:
I read your most recent post, and am sorry the person e-mailing you was so hostile. It got me to wondering whether you think that all subscription schemes on the Web are — well — not the way to go; as they are not all the same. What of those, for example, that offer some content for free, but make more articles or features available to paid subscribers? Then there are the scholarly publications which are made available online as well as in print, and often only to people who have paid a membership fee; but I do understand that those are different in reach and purpose from the Web publications you’re concerned with in this post. Nevertheless, this is yet another Web publishing paradigm that involves money in some way.
Here’s part of my response:
Right now we mostly use the hypertext network for disseminating articles that could pretty much appear on paper. But what people like Ted Nelson envisioned was that we’d have a hypertext network in which link-following was not like tracing a footnote, but like turning a page. We’re starting to see some of that emerging on the Web now with thing like weblogs - reading as a process of following links between many disparate things, and writing as the process of making them.
Things that are subscription or micropayment based don’t prevent the kind of reading and writing that Nelson envisioned. They just restrict it to those who can pay. And that leads us back to what I was talking about in my email.
I actually wrote a whole essay about this (and some related issues) a while back. If you’re interested, it’s at: http://www.intelligentagent.com/archive/spring_linking.html
What I should have remembered to say in my response, but didn’t, was that we do have something going for us as we resist the pay-per-viewing of the hypertext network: the fact that people are accustomed to a very different network, more like a library. This unspoken assumption will work powerfully against those who wish to move the Web toward a different model. I believe that we who are “content providers” in the world of new media should be working to reinforce this expectation of a library — not break it down. Every time we participate in a pay-per-view project on the Web (whether as contributors or subscribers, and whatever the model) we’re working to break it down. I should also have mentioned that the article linked above is very much focused on things that are like documents, and not on things that are more like performances and games — which don’t admit the same types of interlinking, and the experience of which is probably not best thought of as “reading.”
Even with my forgetfulness, it took me a little bit longer to write the response than I expected, because I found that Intelligent Agent had reorganized its archives, and so the old URL I had didn’t work. (After finding the web version of the article again I also corrected the link in the “Books and Articles” section of this page.) I was excited to read, while looking for the article’s new URL, that Intelligent Agent is resuming publication. IA was one of the best new media publications of the 90s — focused on new media in the arts and education — and it should have a lot to offer our rapidly-aging decade. Here’s hoping they don’t choose a model of web subscription. (Perhaps the fact that they’ve become a non-profit organization is a positive indication in this regard.)