Web developers can act like radical environmentalists
I’ve been writing a fair amount lately about how the web is not as much a mass medium for the masses as it has been in the past. There’s still one more musing left for me to share on that topic: we’ve chosen to value machines reading our sites more than humans being able to edit them.
Computers are now a more important audience than humans
I understand the value of the semantic web. I love it, in fact. But so far (and hopefully this will change soon), has had an unintended, and unfortunate side-effect: it establishes web developers as a gatekeeper class for the web, due to the technical knowledge necessary to create semantic web pages.
Of course, what did we expect would happen? We made a fundamental decision that it’s more important for a computer (like a search engine) to read an interpret a web page than it is for a human without technical knowledge to edit that page. It’s like that stereotype about how radical environmentalists value animal and plant life more than human life.
Another case of pragmatism vs. idealism
Maybe it would be ideal if the web truly were a mass medium for the masses. But the fact is, the semantic web is not an idealistic concept: it’s pragmatic. The most profound impact the semantic web has is in search engine optimization. And why is search engine optimization important? One word: Money.
Without that money, businesses would have less money to invest in their websites, meaning lower budgets and shorter timeframes for web design professionals. It also probably means web design would rarely – if ever – command the sophistication and respect of print design.
So it really is a two-headed coin. Yes, the democratic concept of anyone being able to author a website is very idealistic – and I’ll admit I was drawn into the web by that idealism over ten years ago. But idealism has given way to pragmatism, and no matter what my feelings may be about it, I am a benefactor of that shift.