The Web Is a Passive Medium

You listen to radio, watch TV, or read newspapers and magazines because of the content. Nearly everyone in the United States uses one or more of these media every single day. While you are doing so, the media blast ads at you. You can try to ignore those ads, but you cannot be totally unaware of them. The Web, on the other hand, is not nearly as essential to daily life, and probably never will be. There is content there, but most of it duplicates content that can be found in other media. Furthermore, it is easier to get the content from those other media. If you turn on the TV or the radio, or pick up your newspaper from your front door stoop in the morning, there is the content ready for you. You can read or listen while you eat breakfast or while you are getting dressed. You can listen in your car on your way to work. To access the Web, you have to sit down at your computer. You cannot do this while you are dressing, eating, or driving.

Once you get to work, however, the Web is available. Most employees do not have TV or radio at work, but nearly every office worker today has a PC, many of them with Web access. Office workers can, and do, read and write email all day long. It has become essential to modern office work. But email is not the same thing as the Internet. Employees are supposed to be working while they are at work, not surfing the Net. Some employees do listen to the radio while they work, but no one can work while surfing the Net (unless they are in search of business information). So the Web is basically off limits for most people for most of the working day. The same thing is true in the evening. You can sit down at your computer in the evening, and millions do just that. But what most people are doing is reading their email or playing computer games. Only a few spend much time surfing commercial Web sites. It is an exhausting and boring experience after the first week or so.

So the Web cannot be an active medium, blasting ads at people. The people are not watching. Web sites are passive; they are active only when people decide to look at them for a particular reason, which does not happen as often as people had at first assumed it would. What do people do on the Web? Some do personal (or professional) research. The Web is the greatest research tool ever invented. You can find information on just about anything. Some visit chat rooms. Some get details on news or events that go beyond what can be found in the mass media. Some buy products that they cannot easily find in stores. Some listen to or download music.

My vacuum cleaner story, I believe, is typical of consumer Web use. I bought a Hoover with a microfiltration system that needed special bags. When my bags ran out, I went to several supermarkets and department stores in search of more microfiltration bags. None of them stocked the bags. So in desperation I looked up Hoover on the Web. Sure enough, the company had a Web site that offered the right bags. I purchased several. I am sure that Hoover does not make a profit by selling small parts like this on the Web. What the Web site does for Hoover is make its microfiltration vacuum cleaner a viable product. Without the Web, few would ever be able to find the replacement bags.