[spectre] Audiences

[Lachlan Brown]

Hello scarey Techno-Europeans of 'S.P.E.C.T.R.E.'

    I've just come from the Empyre list where everyone is 
playing Doctor Who to avoid a few difficult ideas about 
Real things and Mez is the Dalek. Needless to say, I was 
unsubscribed two or three times. Probably too clever for my 
own good. 

    I am presently doing a rough survey to get a sense of
userships or audiences for WorldWideWeb sites to compare
with my first survey of March 1993 (when there were 1,250
web sites, no users or audiences, and presumably 1,250
producers.) I have plenty of quantitative detail but I would be interested in the insights of, and value the opinion of, the 
'ninety-fourers' and the 
'ninety-fivers' - people who made or curated web sites
in 1994 and 1995 - regarding the question of kind and extent of
present audiences. 

    I ask because there appears to be very little understanding
of the mass extent of WWW use and demand for meaningful content.
There appears to be very little understanding of the potential
for disseminating art and ideas online. 

    To give some sense of the extent of use the WWW and the 
massive audiences for online culture the sites of CTheory, Rhizome,
 and Nettime are respectively 330,000th, 170,000th and 100,000th 
most accessed sites. 

That is, there are 100,000 WorldWideWeb sites accessed by more 
people than access Nettime. Nettime is still considered to be
a primary means of distributing news about art projects, hence
it seems to me that artists and curators have 'lost the plot'
somewhat in sustaining the early influence on the development of 
the WorldWideWeb of arts and critical projects online around that 
time.

    I'd welcome some opinion by long term producers and users
on the nature of these sites and their audiences/users. I would
also be very interested in opinion re: why and when this early 
critical and creative intervention by artists, editors and 
curators was superceded.

    That is, why and when was critical and artistic perspicuity 
and foresight replaced by pliancy of intellect and creative ability?

    Luv

    Lachlan





    




Lachlan Brown 

been there done that doing it again

T(416) 826 6937
VM (416) 822 1123

                                       

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