Sure, the Net is a gusher of endlessly fascinating, symbolic traffic, but it's too vast, too disorganized, and far too arcane for all but the most intrepid. How do you know, without spending half your day trying to keep up, where the best new stuff is to be found?
In the future, I think we'll look back at the first issue of The Global Network Navigator (GNN) as a historic milestone: an editorially and visually sophisticated front end to the Net. In terms of bringing the power of the Net to the non-technical population, the ad-vent of full-color, fully interactive Netzines is equivalent to the shift from punch cards and printouts to keyboards and screens. If you have a connection to the Internet, you can use GNN. Like a magazine, each issue of GNN offers a table of contents screen. Click on the headline, and you'll summon the article, or soon, the video clip or sound bite.
GNN also includes a virtual agora: GNN Marketplace. During its launch, GNN is free. The publishers of GNN, O'Reilly & Associates (ORA), plan to fund the venture with "sponsors who provide commercial information of interest to our readers in GNN Marketplace and through advertising within GNN News," according to ORA's Brian Erwin.
Sebastopol, California-based ORA is an intriguing outfit - definitely a company to watch as the Net becomes a publishing medium. They started out in the computer world, as technical writing consultants in the late 1970s. In 1985 they started publishing their Nutshell Handbooks, and in the late 1980s their books took off among the technical cognoscenti. Then they published Ed Krol's Whole Internet User's Guide and hit the top of computer book bestseller list. They publish more than 70 titles and employ more than 80 people. Expanding into online publishing was not a technical leap for them. If they can follow up on their stunning premier issue, GNN looks like the first high-res Net-hit.
O'Reilly & Associates: +1 (707) 829 0515. Info on subscribing to GNN: (info@gnn.com). - Howard Rheingold
ELECTRIC WORD
A Window On the Matrix
Microsoft Burnout Prevention And
