The Times article blurs the distinction between the World Wide Web and the Internet when it sees fit -- as when it suggests that a slight drop in the average length of users' online sessions might be a result of the Web's "lack of compelling content." Then it turns around and highlights that same distinction, in arguing that users are abandoning the tired old Web for snazzier Internet pastimes like file-swapping and instant messaging.

Of course, the most avid file-swapper needs to download the latest version of his software from somewhere, and that somewhere is nearly always a Web site. Web sites are one vital use of the Internet, along with e-mail, messaging, "peer-to-peer" file-swapping and no doubt further still-undreamed-of applications now brewing in the collective brain. No one ever said the Web was the be-all and end-all of Internet development. But what it was, and is, remains far more important than a mere generator of pop-cultural blips.

Sure, the froth of novelty was always a delightful aspect of the Web's rise, but it was never the heart of the Web enterprise. And the subsidence of that novelty, as users grew more accustomed to the idea of a "many-to-many" medium, was utterly predictable -- and proves nothing about the vitality of the technology or the uses people make of it.

During the aftermath of Sept. 11, as Americans developed a sudden urgent hunger for news and information beyond their borders, the Web made instantly available the news dispatches and editorial columns of publications from around the globe. If the Web did nothing else in 2001, that alone would have justified its existence -- more so than a thousand Fish Cams.

Back in 1997 I started writing this column under the title "Let's Get This Straight," out of a desire to chronicle and correct the astonishing range of nonsense in "old media" coverage of the Web. Between 1997 and 1999 most newspapers, including the Times, got steadily smarter in their Internet coverage, and the need for such vigilance declined.

Every now and then, though, pieces like "Fun Is Hard to Find" arrive, like anachronistic throwbacks, to remind us that some writers and editors in the newsrooms of America still can't get the Web straight, still think it's a passing fad -- and still, in some cases, can't wait to dig its grave.

The Web most certainly is mature today, compared with its incarnations of 1994 or 1997. Maybe some people -- like Cool Site's Davis or others quoted in the Times story -- who were having fun back then are no longer having fun today. Well, some people bore more easily than others.

Meanwhile, the Web has steadily grown as a vast repository of information, reliable and unreliable, on matters weighty and insubstantial, from the intricacies of high-stakes nuclear diplomacy to the discographies of one-hit wonders. And its infrastructure has stabilized to make it steadily more useful, with resources like Google -- searches that work fast, stay up-to-date and find what you're looking for -- and the Internet Archives' Wayback Machine, which offers snapshots of Web pages from the past.

All this -- and novelties, too! Yes, the very newspaper section that published "Fun Is Hard to Find" also features a very capable Online Diary column that offers plenty of "fun." And there are legions of webloggers out there combing the Net for bizarre oddities, then linking to them; just look at Daypop's top links list -- a real-time compilation of what many bloggers are linking to -- for new examples, day and night. (As I write this the list features Google's hilarious list of Britney Spears misspellings, the weirdest-looking computer you've ever seen, and much more.)

Hey, New York Times, if triviality is what you want from the Web, we still got plenty! The Web remains to pop culture what Saudi Arabia is to oil -- we have vast untapped reserves. We just don't want to flood the market. After all, we know that too many of the reporters covering us have short attention spans.

Recent Stories