An odd little thought I had while tweaking my Blogger template: The Web is great because it's sort of sucky. Browsers haven't materially changed much since 1996, web pages have gained more media and styling but they are still spaghetti code wrapped around a glorified electronic Dewey Decimal System, and the majority of the stuff posted online is only marginally more interesting than random ASCII code.
However, I can go on this vast, unregulated wasteland, and post a comment on how much it sucks, and still have the potential to reach millions of people and waste their time with my worthless analysis. Now that's real ultimate power!
For a great contrast, poke around the 'special features' in your TiVo menu some time. It takes about 40 seconds to become totally, utterly, slack-faced bored with the uber-mediated media snippets they push to that menu backwater. Add the TiVo interface, which is AWESOME for flipping through stored video files but completely innefective in creating an immersive, branded experience, and you've got exhibit A as to why the Web hasn't been discarded in favor of some modern Minitel, castrated by a product developer's idea of a clean, intuitive interface.
Then again, I bet I can find a thousand similar posts on why the Web will never superscede Usenet.
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