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Not a brave new interactive age Interactive systems become difficult when everyone starts joining in — this is a major problem as the whole point of interaction is participation on the part of the user. As with many high tech products, interactive systems would work a lot better if there were no real users. The Internet in general and the World Wide Web in particular have created a vehicle for an array of interactive games, written works and plays, all of which users or viewers can either participate in or contribute to. In addition there are forums, newsgroups and chat rooms. A few years ago some believed that we were on the threshold of a brave new interactive age where everything from our newspaper to our car would ask us what we wanted to do or where we wanted to go today. Networks would bring people together, enabling them to pool ideas and resources which would then be applied to a range of problems.

It seemed like a good test of the Internet — and my knowledge of the World Wide Web. The task was to find out which films were showing in Cambridge over the following days. I remembered seeing a reference to a film guide somewhere on the Web — but the question was where? The World Wide Web is like a room into which people are constantly piling books in a haphazard and random manner. So many items had landed in the ‘What's New’ section since the film guide that I had completely lost track of where I had seen it. After checking a couple of media lists and a few local directories I resorted to posting a request for the information in a local newsgroup. The post was answered straight away. Someone had the information in a database and cut and pasted it into a reply — perhaps without even looking at the address itself. The address threw up an error and the software I was using to access the Web told me the file did not exist.

Change within our lives … Change is an important feature of the natural world. Everything is in a state of flux. The simplest organisms mutate. Social structures alter, periodically fragmenting and reassembling in alternative forms. By failing to evolve, an organism lays itself open to threats which exist within a modified environment. However there is, working in opposition to a natural desire for change, an equally strong desire for stability and continuity. How often do we hear the expression ‘what we need now is a period of stability’? Politicians call for it, as do economists and industrialists.

To those living in small rural communities around Lyon in France, the TGV and autoroutes have had little impact other than to take away strips of agricultural land. Rather than bringing the local population the benefits of better communication they have, in some cases, increased their isolation. Local stations are closed down or have reduced services and motorway intersections are deemed unnecessary or impractical for small communities. Left to watch commuters speed past in cars or on trains, those now living in isolated communities are now about to be bypassed by the Superdata Highway. They are not the only ones facing alienation and isolation as workers commute along fibre optic cables to virtual offices.

Like Wired, Ray Gun is one of those magazines which doesn't fit easily in any one place on me newsagents' shelves — shifting each month to a new section as the shopkeeper tries to work out whether it is a pop, leisure or even an arts publication. Claiming to be the ‘Bible of Music and Style’, Ray Gun also heralds the ‘End of Print’. Inside, each article consists of text which is either blended into or superimposed on pictures. Disjointed paragraphs in a variety of typefaces — some of which are barely readable — are produced in a collage format. The overall effect is one of a desktop publishing system which has crashed, sending its contents to the laser printer in a random format. Despite the content being difficult to read it can be assumed — as it has reached issue 23 — that the magazine itself is read. Ray Gun's prediction of the end of print betrays its own belief in having discovered something new and exciting. Exciting it may be, but throughout the eighties artists in Europe, in particular Wulf Rheinshagen of Germany, were producing work which now looks strikingly similar to the magazine pages designed by David Carson.

Do models which can be used to predict the behaviour and performance of manufacturing companies fail when we apply them to organisations whose main product is information? If they do, how will this impact on strategy planning and investment decisions? As suggested in previous articles, companies can be likened to naturally occurring structures such as plants and animals. They have a finite life and the need for evolutionary development means that, sooner or later, these structures must be replaced by others better suited to surviving in a changed environment. Those companies which do survive beyond their natural life span usually do so in name only.

Living happily ever after was a key part of our childhood, which was a time when the world was a vast and incomprehensible place. In those days coping with what might or might not have been over the horizon was simple enough — we just used our imaginations. If we ever did leave our immediate environment we came to terms with the sheer scale of the world by telling ourselves that what we saw around us was merely part of some gigantic film set, constructed for our benefit. The thousands of people we saw were the same ones moving, with us, from place to place. These were tricks we used to cope with our first encounter with information overload.

A growing number of publications are putting their content online — some in a measured and thought‐out manner, others as a knee‐jerk reaction to all the hype surrounding the Internet. And hype there is. It seems a day doesn't go by without a Klondike‐scale gold strike in some remote area of cyberspace. It will be those who are able to keep their heads who will have somewhere to put their hats — or at least somewhere sensible to put their content.

There is a reasonably clear‐cut case for putting reference titles online. In fact a large number of non‐fictional works are either partially or totally available in an electronic format. Online fiction should also, in theory, be quite straightforward. After all, fiction has existed in printed form for many hundreds of years. What is more, television copes with fictional drama without too much difficulty. At first sight the computer should be able to take key elements from both the printed and broadcast media to produce something which is both readable and entertaining. But both broadcast and printed fiction are built around strong, and well defined, narrative structures which me reader, or viewer, follows religiously. On the other hand the computer encourages, and in some cases forces, the user to interact — this interaction usually results in a departure from the set narrative. Without this facility the computer offers little that is new. Making use of this facility to enhance fictional works is difficult and, so far, only computer games manufacturers have achieved success.

In recent months there has been a Succession of deals and investments in the publishing and broadcasting industry. Large amounts of money have changed hands in a dash for content. With the realisation that online services are about to make a significant impact on the way information isdistributed, the race to capture content and content providers has started. Somehow service providers must fill up the greatly expanded airtime that online multimedia offers. The announcement that Microsoft will, in spring of 95, enter the online market is likely to transform the race into a stampede — with it there is the potential for the media industry to replace the property sector as the ideal way of throwing money into a black hole.