Here Come the SuitsHere Come the SuitsWill the Web lose its soul?
As the corporate types set up beachheads, new practices and standards will emerge. Some of these will encourage innovation and creativity; others may trigger resentment.
The university and "big science" communities, inspired mainly by enthusiasts in their own ranks, have led the way in defining the Web's interface esthetics, and in creating the primary content models for new Web-based information providers to emulate. But recently we have seen a host of new players come on the scene, among them:
This approach may seem entirely consistent with established home page practice. But it differs from older models in its subtle shift away from a service orientation -- the academic collaboration and information discovery sensibility -- to a more self-aware stance. At least a few of these new players seem to regard their Web servers primarily as tools for advancing their own commercial or mission-related agendas, and for building visibility and prestige among influential audiences that have access to the Web.
Today this is a dawning trend. Tomorrow it's likely to be enshrined among the two or three top business objectives that motivate organizations to become Web information providers. In many of these institutions, senior executives, with their own specialists in external communications securely in tow, will take note of the Web's potential to reach audiences that can directly influence their organizations' success and prosperity. The inevitable result: the "suits" will elbow in on the game.
The effects of this evolution will be felt in many quarters, but perhaps most profoundly in the Web-pioneer subcultures within the organizations that move to regulate (or even import corporate communication specialists to guide) Web presentational styles. Without endorsing any wholesale disenfranchisement of Net enthusiasts and pioneers, we do want to underscore the rich potential of the Web for external communications, a potential far more likely to be reached in organizations where diverse skill sets are put into play for organization-wide home page initiatives.
In this discussion we are pointing to some of the common intellectual capital elements that can energize institutional self-presentation on the Web, and surely not prescribing who should take responsibility for bringing them to life. In fact, the soundest management case can be made for interdisciplinary, widely inclusive team efforts in this kind of initiative.
But whoever is in charge, the success of the approach we're discussing hinges on institutional honesty and good taste. The media-rich information an organization can provide through the Worldwide Web has to be accurate and helpful to the self-selecting audiences that choose to access it. As we point out in the next section, spin control and mass-media glitz won't cut it with the opinion leader audiences that service firms and institutions will strive to reach. By the same token, neither will self-consciously enthusiastic jump-lists of "cool sites on the Web".
