<div align="justify"> <p>Imagine a place with no world wide web, where facsimile (a low bandwidth way of fooling copper telephone wires into sending copies of paper documents) is the widest used business communications medium. </p><p>A place where business and scientific information is only available through proprietary and expensive databases, and executives ask secretaries to word process documents. </p><p>Where is this deprived place? Some third world backwater, or the 1950s perhaps? It's scary to realise that it's our world, just 10 years ago. </p><p>Some might quibble with this picture. There was growing use of email in 1993, after all, and the internet was already an established phenomenon. </p><p>But surely none would disagree that it was Marc Andreessen's writing (over his Christmas vacation) of the first web browser - a program he called Mosaic - which enabled easy access to Tim Berners-Lee's 1991 invention - a graphical interface for the internet called the world wide web - that changed the communications world forever. </p><p>The dotcom boom and bust that followed came on the heels of the incredible burst of energy and excitement around the concept of an information superhighway: a multimedia, high-bandwidth, high-availability network that was going to pipe incredible amounts of content to homes in the US. </p><p>We've all cooled on the initial irrational exuberance of all things cyber. Yet who could deny that the web has already had a tremendous impact on our lives? </p><p>Imagine a teenager or undergraduate of today without the net, let alone a businessperson, consumer or book-buyer. If so much has changed in 10 years, what's next? </p><p>That's too big a question for a short article. So vnunet.com's sister title Information World Review talked to the following prominent names in the information publishing and management industry and asked them some key questions about where we are and where we're going next, as a result of Mosaic and the web. </p><p>Martin White Managing director of Intranet Focus, a firm specialising in intranet development and consulting. White has been in electronic publishing since 1982 in a number of organisations. </p><p>Clare Hart President and chief executive at Factiva, one of the largest information publishing operations. </p><p>Mark Rowse Chief executive at Ingenta, a UK internet publishing company founded in 1998 and now established as a force in scholarly information. </p><p>Jonathan Gordon-Till Information manager at Aon Consulting and a regular contributor in a personal capacity to Information World Review. </p><p><b>Where were we before the web?</b> </p><p>Martin White: Librarians held real power. There was always a lot of content that organisations could draw on, but it usually ended up in the library, and accessing and using it required specialist training and skills. The average user couldn't use these databases. That's completely changed. </p><p>Even so, there was always a goal of being able to deliver content to every client or desktop. That's what was behind the ideas around Viewdata and Videotext business information on the TV, only it turned out there were very few TVs in business. </p><p>So the story of the last 10 years has been how that dream has been achieved, but accompanied by the realisation that there's a lot of information out there and, if it's free, can we trust it? </p><p><b>What has the effect of the web been - good or bad - on our industry?</b> </p><p>Mark Rowse: Good and bad. Good in that it's moved information directly onto the researcher's desktop; bad in that there is a wide degree and variation in information they can see and access. </p><p>That's bad for young researchers who've not developed the skill to pick through selected resources like we all used to and find the right elements. </p><p>I see us as having gone from information adrenaline to content chaos, but I'm sure we'll get to a nerd-free nirvana. </p><p><b>Clare Hart:</b> </p><p>Mixed. The web has raised awareness that high-quality information is critical in making good business decisions. </p><p>Concurrently, it has fuelled an incredible growth in the amount of information available. Thus, it has presented organisations with the dual challenges of information overload and information overlook. </p><p>This has a serious impact on productivity. IDC, for example, says that Fortune 1000 companies will lose $7.5bn (£4.7bn) this year trying to find the right information to make business decisions. </p><p>But don't forget: we've only been at it 10 years. The future is bright. Web-based technologies such as crawlers, XML, web services and sophisticated UI development tools will make information management more simple to carry out. </p><p>Searching has become a more familiar task, meaning that information workers are tackling basic research tasks themselves. As a result, the role of the information professional has evolved, shifting from researcher to facilitator. </p><p>These skilled workers are now increasingly in charge of knowledge assets for their organisations, with increasing levels of responsibility for rolling out content and knowledge management initiatives. </p><p>So the opportunity is there for the individuals who take an interest in and partner with information technology professionals and who develop the leadership and change management skills to drive information management in their organisation. I'm not suggesting this will be easy. But it will be necessary. </p><p><b>Jonathan Gordon-Till:</b> </p><p>Information management in its broadest sense (i.e. information creation, acquisition, transmission, manipulation, storage and destruction) has evolved in the last 10 years in ways we could never have imagined. </p><p>No-one would have believed - at the lay person's level - that end-users would dominate the electronic information market using web technology, or that the volume of active information being managed around the planet would explode at such a rate, yet incredibly still be managed by only a handful of common standards (HTML, XML, and so forth). </p><p>Now, though, those things are commonplace and we are beginning to see previously unimaginable applications created every day, for instance intelligent agents and web applications embedded in common workplace computer applications (for example, in Microsoft Office). </p><p><b>Martin White:</b> </p><p>It hasn't killed our industry, but it has certainly forced us to have a rethink about what it is we do and offer. </p><p>Remember that scientific journals, which started in the 1600s, hadn't really changed until Maxwell started commercialising that market after the War. </p><p>There have been a lot of challenges, but the main impact has been the way we've all had to wrestle with what a channel is. </p><p>And the cost issue just hasn't been decided yet, as we see publications like the Financial Times moving to a paid-for model. We laughed when the Wall Street Journal did that, but look at it now. </p><p><b>Where are we heading, and do we want to go there?</b> </p><p>Clare Hart: Absolutely. As users become more sophisticated in using information, they are demanding easy access, speed and high degrees of relevance. </p><p>The desktop of the future will deliver information specific to the role of information workers, supporting their work processes in intuitive and valuable ways. </p><p>It will allow users to search data - structured or unstructured, internal or external - from a single place and present content within the context of the user's work. </p><p>Increasingly, role-based applications will anticipate user needs and pre-populate a user interface based on job function, past behaviour or calendar information. </p><p><b>Jonathan Gordon-Till:</b> </p><p>I have some serious philosophical concerns. If unchecked, the web will have caused an evolution in information management. </p><p>It will be hard to turn back the clock to a time when we managed only small volumes of information; when we managed information only to the extent to which we could understand it answering our immediate needs. </p><p>The web has altered our relationship with the real world. The logical conclusion of the web is that a unique common standard will emerge, and humans will have instantaneous access to all known and yet-to-be-known information on the planet. </p><p>This implies that decision-making could become instantaneous, but also that the consequences of erroneous information management are multiplied to horrendous proportions. </p><p><b>Martin White:</b></p><p> I think we're beginning to see the start of 'database publishing', where content is developed independently of the target channel and the most appropriate bits are used for the most appropriate channel. </p><p>The problem is that to get there we have to take some risks and throw away the past. Smart publishers are the ones which will look ahead five years to where they want to be and work backwards on how best to get there. Too many of them currently fail to plan for the future, which is very high-risk in this environment. </p><p><b>Mark Rowse:</b></p><p> I think the future will go back to where we started in a way, with Berners-Lee's new idea - the semantic web - which has as much information available as this one but understands it better. </p><p>I can see information being more aware of its context as well as its contest. And maybe we'll end up with a more three dimensional web where users can see the density of back-up for various information elements. </p><p>But whatever happens technically this is the right industry to be in. Information is going to be the driver of all the societal change we can expect this century, as well as the only tool for surviving it.</p></div>