|| Return to On The Road... ||
July 26, 1996
Sacramento
Sacramento is as close to hometown as I get, with an audience joining in from the Bay Area, the Sacramento area, and from Nevada via Reno and Lake Tahoe. Northern California has a way of melding with Nevada, a broad market joined not only by the commercial opportunities, but by the tax relief Nevada offers over-burdedened Californians.
This area of the country has much to do with the Web. Last time we were here, the question went to the audience; has anyone actually bought a car online?
Sure enough, a man from Nevada raised his hand and shared how he found a car on the Web. He ordered it from Sacramento; the car was driven up the next day. That's the model when the Web works; order and overnight delivery, with a price that makes the deal worth doing. If I can get it as cheap locally without looking, why would I go online? Products and services have to have an economic incentive, as well be easy to locate. (By the way, I bet the Nevada resident didn't have to pay California's tax rate.)
I'm off on a break to get married after this show, and in thinking about what has happened the past year online is amazing. I remember when the Web didn't work, like a show we did in New York earlier this year.
The online connection had been tough to get going, so in struggling I basically depended on running off the hard drive. For some reason our Windows 3.1 system decided to be flaky as well, making even the hard drive tough. After lunch I came back and opened up my files in Netscape, turned my back, and heard the audience gasp in amazement.
I looked back and the entire page was delivered in Cyrillic, an old Slavic alphabet based on that of the Greeks. And it sure looked Greek. Funny thing is, the audience thought it was one of my techie tricks, like I had magically transformed the page into Cyrillic to show them the translating capabilities of the Web.
I wish I could lay claim to this magic, but it was another burp from the Web, this one from not being online. And with a live audience, they assumed entertainment; what if it had been online? What would you do if the Web turned Cyrillic?
While this won't happen often, when the Web does break down, the visitor leaves, thinking he or she did something wrong. I wonder if the man from Nevada who bought a car would have bought in Cyrillic? Or even worse, when one of those advanced tricks we are always promised makes Netscape break down?
The Web is starting to move a bit slowly; time to keep it simple, before it all turns Cyrillic. I thought teaching a technical language was bad...what would happen if the Web turned Cyrillic?