The World Wide Web is here to stay. Once given new ways to learn and communicate, people will not allow them to be taken away. The smartest publishing and media companies these days are working hard to keep abreast of the technology, knowing that the technical details of the Web are changing. In addition to delivery through telephone lines and modems, cable TV wires and digital satellite TV systems promise to deliver content more quickly. Airplanes, hotel rooms, and cars are being equipped to receive digital information. And new technology is allowing extensive customization of the kinds of information delivered.Some of the biggest new media ventures have already been reinvented several times. Two years ago it was pioneering for a newspaper to have created a World Wide Web site. Today, the journalism pioneers are those trying new kinds of ventures, such as Microsoft's pairing with NBC News on MSNBC, a combination Internet service and cable TV channel that brings new meaning to the term “multiple media.” It is likely that this kind of reinvention, led by new ideas on ways to make the most use of the many new communication tools, will continue to occur.It might not be called the World Wide Web in 20 years, but there will never be a retreat from the idea of improved delivery of more information. Technological predictions about faster delivery, integration with more household appliances (Web TV devices now attach to the television and allow Web access for less than $400), and two-way communication are easy to make. Content predictions about which types of Web pages will become the most common are more difficult to make. But the publishers and media companies that commit to continued innovation and progress in these new arenas will likely fare as well as the journalists who made the successful transition from newsprint to radio and then to television when those technologies emerged decades ago.
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