Has The Web Created Chaos in Communicating?

In the old days, as an MIT alum one got a magazine, Technology Review, that told you what was going on back at Tech and also some updates on former classmates and colleagues. I still get the magazine from Columbia and even Columbia P&S albeit not even a student there, just passing through. But not Technology Review, taken over a decade or more by some West Coast "dot com" types is now a totally incomprehensible jumble of rumors, opinions, half ideas, and ads. There is no structure to it and re-connecting with MIT is the farthest thing in mind.

One often wonders about Development Offices. Harvard is great, Columbia P&S not bad, but MIT in my experience seems to be run by amateurs. First if the Technology Review was the flagship communications method to alumni, would one not think it should be clear? It appears as a want to be Scientific American, the new one, not the good old one.

On the other hand the MIT now has many on line news feeds, from the student newspaper to the news releases from the Institute's News Office. There is also a self proclaimed "quirky" thing called The Slice which frankly is not bad. It is sort of reminiscent of the old days, somewhat techy and seeing humor in strange places.

This even makes the efforts of Technology Review seem ever so much more strange. Why, one wonders, have the alumni magazine appear as a sci-tech National Inquirer? Filled with prognostications more opinion than reasoned fact and in addition scattered about a minefield of pop up ads? One may ask, who is this targeted to?

Frankly I have no clue, but alas, no one really asked me anyhow. It is just well below freezing and wind blowing in excess 50 mph so I thought it good to let this out.

But simply the question should be: what does one want the reader/viewer to do with what is presented on the screen? Today we have pop ups, moving images, foot note images, blinking ads, things that make noise and so forth. They all seem to be demanding my attention. It is akin to a carnival sideshow. A typical abuser recently is Science, the flagship of the AAAS. When one enters the site the first thing one sees is one of those moving dioramas telling one tale or another using images to attract our attention. Then the flashing and blinking ads for some now form of instrumentation. How does one find the articles in the current addition?

In contrast the Brits equivalent, Nature, seems not to have been hit by the extreme distaste of the New York youth driven techno media types. In New York there appears to be a desire to show how many new tricks they can do with html. I now find myself going to Nature rather than Science because Science and the media kids just annoy me! Vendors should take notice. As an example, Google is still understated, like an old Brooks Brothers store, they just get generations returning.

Thus the question for many of the media types is; who is your target reader and why? If you run an alumni magazine then perhaps you should focus on that. If you run a scientific publication, try to respect your subscribers.

In a sense the multimedia types have a set of tools in their tool box and they want to show how they can use each and every one, all the time. It is akin to a 6 year old getting their first big box of Crayolas, some 72 different colors, and using everyone in the drawings just to make the point. I liked Burnt Umber but would use as many as possible. It did not look like a multicolord quilt, it was chaos.