What the heck is Hugh talking about now, you may ask. I'm glad you did. In order to get people like you to read this column, I sometimes get a little fast and loose with the titles. Yes, Superman is mentioned in this writing. And Shakespeare. Did they meet? That would be silly. Superman is a fictional character and Shakespeare was a living person who created characters. At some time I'm sure that we had the comic book character of Superman meeting Shakespeare. Time traveling, perhaps. But that is not what this web column is about.
Back To The "Original" Original
I initially wrote my web site using pure code: Hyper Text Markup Language or HTML. There were no real user-friendly page makers then, so I got several books and followed the recipe in creating my first page. I started out with one page that had a black and white line caricature of me at the top with all my site links on the same page. The background was the default gray. I basically transferred my early bookmarks to the site. I still put up my favorite links here, but I also write this series of essays know as "Hugh's Views".
You're So Vain
The web has replaced the "vanity press" for publishing people's writings. For those who don't know what I'm talking about (and I know this happens every month) vanity publishers produce books by people who want to become published writers without being selected by a book company. Anyone can have their writings put into book form. The only catch is the authors pay out of their own pockets for the publication and must find a way to sell the books. This is no cheap prospect, but it does allow people to say that they are published authors, even if all copies of their book reside in boxes in their garage.
The Publisher Epidemic
The Internet in general and the world wide web in particular have altered this reality. Now anybody with a computer and a service provider can publish to a prospective real audience. I say prospective because for works to be read they must first be seen by another person and not just the significant other who may help with the proofreading. But the fact remains that instead of decomposing in storage these words reside on a computer that spits them out to anyone on line who types or clicks the proper combination, anywhere in the world.
The "S" Word
This is an awesome concept (to have anybody anywhere be able to read your musings, stories, poetry or, as in this case, babbling.) There are now millions who have the capability to read, write, send pictures or live video and sound images into this void. (The porno industry is quick to publish pictures of nude girls, nude guys and nude animals for fun and profit. After all isn't this how the home video revolution got its initial start? Sex sells. { Just by writing the key words nude and sex will bring more people to this page than anything else}).
All the Lonely People...
If you write on the web and nobody reads it, does it still exist? Hits, or the number of people who visit your pages, seems to be the driving force in the web market these days. You're not successful unless you can brag of hundreds or thousands or millions (see porno) of hits. People are watching less television because of the web. I feel the reason for this is that people want to control the content of what they watch and no number of channels will satisfy people's curiosity or hunger for something they can control in such a personal manner. There are so many things to see and do now on the web. When the net was just text it was less interesting (and successful), but now that we can put pictures, sounds and movies out there, we've sweetened the mix.
...Where Do They All Come From?
Think of this supposition; Male baby boomers like me would not have been so literate if it were not for the comic books we read in our youth. Pictures and words. They set us up for the web. Also pictures and words. They got us interested in stories, art and mythology. Superman rules! At the time we started to develop, television was in its infancy. More pictures and words, spoken but still words. Comics took us away from TV and now the web is doing the same thing. Both the web and comics are cruder than the mainstream movies and television, but they both offer a wider variety of choice. And the web does something that no media has ever done; it allows anyone to publish their thoughts for an unlimited international audience. Anyone can become William Shakespeare or Thomas Paine or Henry Miller or Hugh Hefner or Adolf Hitler.
Hugh Peebles Late Summer, 1997
Hugh's
Other Views