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Sunday, July 05, 1998 By Michael Newman
They were the best of sites, they were the worst of sites; they were sites of wisdom, they were sites of foolishness; they were sites of streaming video and Java applets, they were simple HTML sites.
Actually, I'm not sure either of these sites involves any streaming applets, which sound like an intestinal disorder. I toss around these highly technical terms because, well, it's expected of me. I need to know just enough of them to intimidate my editor, yet not so many that I bewilder my readers. It's a fine line.
Anyway, the two sites I'm talking about are both about Mount Pleasant, Westmoreland County - not to be confused with Pennsylvania's three other Mount Pleasants, or the ones in Iowa, Michigan, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas or Utah. (Isn't the Internet wonderful? You have it to thank for all those useless facts.)
The first site is a pleasant (no pun intended) site about the town, its history and some of its residents. The other is mostly advertisements for the town's businesses.
We can argue about which site we like better, and we will, but I don't want to get dragged into that too quickly. My first point, and my best one, is that both sites fit nicely into my Grand Unified Theory of the Internet, which can be summarized thusly: It changes nothing. Zero. Nada. Zilch. Do I need to spell it out for you?
I'm aware of the other theory, emanating from the Better Than Sliced Bread school of thought, which holds that the Internet changes everything. It's going to change the way we buy, sell, work, talk, read, eat, dress and relate to our mothers. It will, in short, make the world a better place happier, more peaceful, more profitable.
Mount Pleasant would suggest otherwise. In Mount Pleasant, the Internet is simply giving all the same tired old arguments a new forum. It's actually quite comforting, when you think about it.
Last year, Sheila O'Connor started her page at www.mtpleasantpa.com "to give the world a picture of the town," she says. By now the site has had more than 4,000 visitors, many of them looking for old friends or family. The comments in her online "guest book" are uniformly favorable (with the exception of some wacko UFO fanatic. They're everywhere.).
Joseph Larkin, in contrast, started the site at www.wpa.net/pleasant/pleasantpage.htm with a less exalted purpose: He wants to make money. "Our site is really geared toward the more commercial-type events," he says, noting that it includes a calendar of events for the local Chamber of Commerce and merchants'association. Like O'Connor, he sells ads for the site, though he appears to be a much more aggressive salesman.
Neither O'Connor nor Larkin is overly fond of the other, for reasons we needn't go into here, and neither has a particularly favorable view of the other's Web site. Like I said, I don't want to get into that now. (I reserve the right to examine it more fully at a later date, perhaps in a special 10-part series.)
I will say that I find O'Connor's site more interesting, though of course this means nothing because they're aimed at different audiences. If you want to buy something, go to Larkin's page. If you want to learn about Mount Pleasant, go to O'Connor's site.
It is an unfortunate trend, I agree: As the Internet gets more commercial, it also becomes less interesting. But this is nothing new. Think of Madonna. Pierogies. The NBA.
As for me, I resolutely affirm, here and now, that I will never sacrifice my standards or compromise my interests in an effort to become more commercial. It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done.
Hypertext appears every Sunday in the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette.
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