Judging by what I saw of on-line content, smileys were what people wanted. Charlene wasn't the only one who resented this. Over the years, I found that Web technicians deeply resented the demands of page designers. The Web (they said) is for the presentation of information, of words, of ideas. Not for pictures of your family pet or your Aunt Sally. But, as an artist, I have to say that images are ideas! Images are content! I was trying so hard to conform to what technicians wanted. "Dump the images," they insisted. "Get rid of flashy gimmicks and scrolling marquees! Don't load your page with pictures. Users hate fancy airbrushed backgrounds that are slow to load." Excuse me! My eventual goal was to get my paintings on line. This is not the family pet. My art is not a little white rat! But if it were, who are these scientists to tell me not to love it? Not to express my creativity? I grew angry at technicians who demanded control over my content. Before long I got a frightful lesson in how the arbitrary decisions of nameless, faceless technicians and corporations play a vital role in how you, the user, will interact with the world; how, and whether, your content will be presented.
(Confessions of a fearful geek).
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