Call me a heretic but lately, as we witness the birth of the "Trans-Global MegaNet", I can't help thinking about the good old days of UNIX, command lines and text-only browsing. The internet has evolved of course, but I find myself wondering whether it would be a better world if we took all those 6.0 advances and used them to enhance the 1.0 version of our global network. In doing so we could create an internet with all the speed and bandwidth it needed, while boiling away all the fat we seem to complain about as we choke on another mouthful. WIred and wireless, its being built now. I call it the low-rez net, a high fiber diet of information.

Information communication is at the heart of low-rez philosophy. Give me what I need right now; no artificial sweeteners or colors allowed. The low-rez net is the new Bauhaus, form and technology follow functionality. Make it work first, only then make it look good.

I believe that the Web's patron saint, Tim Berners-Lee knew what we needed and gave it to us; a way to communicate that hid the command line and mimicked the printed page. Pictures that added to the content could be included, but the true killer app was hypertext; giving us the ability to follow multiple trains of thought, reading both on and between the lines.

If the early net was paradise to those needing to communicate from afar, then the Web became our Garden of Eden. But the snake was not far and reared his head in the form of HTML 2.0, 3.2, and 4.0. The snake's world has rapidly evolved from just text to colored text and graphic text and graphics and pictures and pictures that move and movies and sound and movies with sound and it keeps going. It is bigger and louder and more colorful and way slower and way more confusing and is now busting out of the thin network of wires that first brought it to life over 30 years ago. Today it wants a wider highway for its motion and sound and entertainment and e-commerce opportunities. Small and monochrome is not good enough; may I have 21 inches or more of Technicolor banner ads please!

We still, however, have an opportunity to resist. HTML was the great publishing equalizer and it still can be. Listen to Jakob Nielsen and put yourself on a code diet; consume only what is necessary. Take a look at the newly redesigned Salon.com for Palms and Pocket PCs at Avantgo.

Build your own low-rez net printing press and provide an alternative to the "Everything we want you to buy Everywhere" Web. And as for streaming video with sound that you can interact with? It's called television and its available with a remote that clicks for under a hundred dollars at Kmart (the store, not the website!).

Thinking low-rez means communicating enough information to make a point, but not so much that you obscure it. Do it with thoughtful text, hyper-links and images. Do it without moving and flashing stuff that slows down the network and your brain. If you must sing and dance online, make it short and sweet and to the point. You don't have to be low-tech to be low-rez. You do have to scroll and click less and think more. Say no to broadband and yes to low-rez, you'll be glad you did.

Need help cutting back?
Take a look at my low-rez hotlist-

• Jakob Nielsen
  
• Digital Mavica; Game Boy Camera
  
• Palm VII
  
• WAP-enabled phone
  
• DoCoMo

More on the frame of the moment
from my hometown newspaper...
Moment at Gunpoint Yields Searing Image
(washingtonpost.com)

As if we needed it...
once again the power of the still photograph is on display...
the ability to influence and sway opinion...
for better or worse...
in ways that mountains of time-coded video can not.
Alan Diaz-Pool via Reuters

Last week was personally rather interesting in my brief history of the Web. Tuesday I did lunch with one of the founders of a webzine catering to photojournalists and videographers. I was interested in getting his help spreading the word; visual artists, particularly those at traditional news organizations, need to get hip to the web. I wanted to know if he would help in the efforts to train disciples at a workshop this summer. His site has become one that people look to for its willingness to put good work online.

Over the course of an hour and a half, however, we talked primarily about venture capitalists, IPOs, subscription fees and b-to-b business models. I found my head swimming not so much over the numbers talk, but over the lack of photo-talk. It was like being on the moon with a tank full of nitrogen instead of oxygen. I was breathing fine, but the wrong stuff was coming out.

I left lunch seriously wondering whether we visual artists were all likely to end up as bottom-lines on someone else's spreadsheet. Luckily the folks at my day job were headed blissfully down the another path, reveling in the news that several of them had just been award one of journalism's top honors given ostensibly for the quality of their work rather on the soundness of their stock offering. Given the state of the web recently, this was truly like a breath of fresh air.

A new entry into the uber-gallery treatment of photography online - washingtonpost.com - Camera Works. Lots of pictures, lots of links, lots of videos (of photographers talking about their work); lots and lots of bandwidth. What do you think?

My current day job is as a photography editor at a print magazine, one without a decent web presence. I hope to change this soon, but there are some nice things about being grounded in the tactile world. I spent the better part of Thursday at the DC public library going through old photographs from the 60's and 70's. Some observations;

-fiber-based prints feel nice.
-a well-fixed print will still "glow" after 30 years.
conversely, a poorly fixed print will fade a lot more than you think in 30 years.
-over time, a detailed caption reveals as much about an era as about the photograph itself.
-really looking at photographs requires time; something that is much easier to find when they are in your hand rather than on your screen.