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The web is perhaps the most important invention for the dissemination of information since Gutenberg's invention of the movable type printing press around 1450. It offers a number of advantages over hard copy (i.e., printed on paper) books and other printed media including the following: (1) Anyone can immediately self-publish their work for a worldwide audience. It is no longer necessary to spend time trying to locate the best publisher (or any publisher) and then waiting to have the work published and shipped. (2) There are no costs for paper, printing, binding or shipping. Also, it is not necessary to make any payments to a publisher, in contrast to vanity publishing (i.e., when an author pays a publisher to publish a work). (3) A work can be published in stages, even one page at a time. In contrast to hard copy books, it is not necessary to have the entire work completed prior to publication. This has several advantages, including making content available to users more quickly, allowing the author to get much faster feedback and facilitating writing at the most suitable pace for the author. (4) A work can be corrected, updated or expanded immediately. In the case of a hard copy book, it can take years and much expense to produce a revised edition, except in the case of those relatively few books that are extremely popular and profitable. (5) The work can be accessed anywhere in the world where there is an Internet connection. This can be particularly advantageous for users in rural areas in which bookstores and libraries may be of poor quality or even non-existent. (6) There is nothing for readers to buy once the initial equipment (e.g., computer, web TV or Internet appliance) and Internet connection are obtained. A large part of the world's population is too poor to purchase books, especially those published in the industrial countries. (7) The desired content in a work can be quickly located by potential users through indexes, search engines, etc., often much more efficiently than it can in a hard copy book. (8) Individual pages or portions thereof can be easily and quickly copied by a user for personal use by using an inexpensive printer or by copying on to a floppy disk. (9) Authors can obtain quick feedback from users via e-mail. (10) Works can be produced collaboratively by individuals at dispersed locations as easily as they can be produced by individuals concentrated at a single location. (11) Copyright infringements on the web can be quickly detected through the use of search engines. (12) Translations into other human languages can be created automatically. Although the quality of such translations is still far from perfect, it is getting better. (13) Works can serve as references for further works. As more and more high quality content appears on the web, it will become an increasingly important reference source for other works. LINMO (linked information modules) is a model of a web site that attempts to most effectively combine these advantages with the best qualities of hard copy books in order to help the web move closer to its potential as a high quality information and education resource. Created May 8, 2006. |