© 1997 j-dom Media. Contact us!Derek Powazek graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 1991 with a major in photojournalism. But it was already too late: He'd been hooked to the web since his last year of college, he had become fascinated in the new world forming out there. There weren't many jobs to be found at the time and so he started designing web sites (and winning awards), ultimately getting a job a HotWired, a central part of the new media revolution.
He got pretty excited about the whole thing but it eventually soured. So he moved to the pioneering electronic community creators Electric Minds as a producer. Somewhere, sometime he started the e-zine tweak which has since spurned him, to his distress. Now, as he puts it "I fray at night." He created and runs with a loose band of friends the brilliant site The Fray (a winner of our now defunct Select Site) which has more awards and acclaim than is healthy. Not only is its design astounding but so are the articles.
I kicked off by asking about interactivity: "You've been interested in showing that technology and especially HTML can be an art form. In making The Fray you've shown this to be the case and also added interactivity. How do you feel interactivity is affecting things and do you feel that the word is being abused?"
"The word has most certainly been abused, but it's only one of many. It's a funny word - it has that instant zing: 'Interactivity? I want that!' - but people rarely know what it is or even why they want it.
I'm not so sure I'd call the fray interactive. There's some interaction there in the posting area, but that's purposefully slow and thoughtful. I was trying to get as far away from the 'any chicks here?' chat mode as I could. That's also why the posting areas are the hardest thing to get to - you have to read the story before you can comment on it.
But to really be interactive, a website should cater itself toward the actions of the user, so each person's experience there is different. It should observe and take note of the user's choices and facilitate fluid discussions. It should be smart, unique, active...."
The web is all about interactivity, and all of it focuses on the user. You pick where to go and when. Yet push technology is exactly the opposite, no interactivity, no choice in where you go and no choice when. I asked Derek what his take on push technology was.
"It's hard to say.
Push media, at its best, is a nifty little utility to bring you things you ask for while you're off doing other stuff.
But, push media, at it's worst, is a sorry attempt by advertisers to create something they understand: a captive audience.
It's so easy to get around ads on the web. Scroll them away, turn off your graphics, or even use a plug-in to keep them out.
But have you ever tried to turn off the ads on PointCast?
Well, ha. You can't.
And that is the reason we keep hearing about push media.
Push media is, in actuality, a media-created set of buzzwords coupled with mythical software being forced into reality by the only people who have something to gain by it: the advertising industry and the media companies that depend on ads as revenue.
So there. ;-) "
I couldn't have agreed with him more. So I asked some more questions in Part 2
