Comment Articles

The beginning of online scepticism?

Guy Kewney AnchorDesk

Published: 02 Jun 2000 15:18 BST

Up till this week, most serious observers would have prophesied that all IT publishing would move to the Web -- news, analysis, and direct access. Now, there are financial realists pointing out that the dotcom world has to make money as well as sense. And even obviously soundly based ideas -- like EarthWeb are being examined critically. Yes, publishing newsletters on the Web makes sense, but how much sense? What, in short, is the turnover, what the profit?

But I think there's another question that needs to be asked, before that one can be settled. And it is: are we sceptical enough about Web provided information? -- how long will it be before we start to mistrust the stuff we read on the Internet? And to what degree? Even more to the point, how long will people carry on innocently following hyperlinks?

Ultimately, the answer to this doesn't really concern me; I'm not an entrepreneur. Sure, I write. I reckon that if publishing moves to the Internet, then the biggest publishers will be there, and they'll need to hire good writers; I'll be on the list of job applicants whether they are Web newsletters or paper, or something else.

But the key to the Web is the hyperlink.

Now, the trend isn't a big one yet, but let's see if you recognise yourself in any of the following scenarios:

1) You get email from a colleague. It's an attached HTML file, with nothing to explain what it is, except "Think you might enjoy this!" -- do you click the file? or examine it in Wordpad? or reply to your colleague saying: "Are you sure you don't have a virus? can you send this in plain text, please?"

2) You're reading a story on one of the lesser-known Web news services, and there's a hyperlink. It has almost no explanation -- do you follow it? When you do, are you sitting there with your fingers hovering over Alt-F4 so that you can stop it immediately if it turns out to be a scripted Web site that won't let you close the browser?

3) Have you still got scripting enabled in your browser? Or do you cut and paste recommended URLs onto a diskette, and load that on a second machine, which isn't attached to the LAN, so that your colleagues aren't infected by any disclosure software you may have invoked?

4) How long is it since you disabled download "wizard" software on your machine so that new plug-ins automatically loaded? How often do you do a "save to disk" when the supplier of a new plug-in recommends running it from the site direct, just so that you can examine the executable and see what it is actually doing?

Read on for the last scenario...