CompuServe Messages

<<it still won't save your fanny if the content sucks!!!.>> I think you've hit on a much more subtle problem, Michael. As the rank amateur get's more and more sophisticated power and talent; the ability to stretch professional looks over absolute garbage will run rampant. Our (amateur) new-found ways of telling an ill-researched and non-factual yet very compelling story will startle you. I'm in the cartography biz. The advent of desktop mapping and publishing tools has created the same problem. Oh, at first the junk amateurs made was easy to spot — laughable even to the untrained eye. But these amateurs, studied. They learned to knock-off the looks of the work pros did. They learned desktop publishing, but learned little about how maps are made. They learned to make products that look so much better than the actually are. Products that make statements in forms that decry truth; and in reality are accidental lies. Lies of ignorance. There is a mystic ethic that media professionals subscribe to (tho, it's getting less and less evident these days). With the tools comes a responsibility. Now the tools are available to everyone; but we don't share in your responsibility. We don't subscribe to your standards. We say whatever we want. We just make it look like it came from you.