Author's Note

I began creating the webnovel, 1969: Protest, Sex, Drugs, and Rock n' Roll, in 1995 when, as a consultant in educational publishing, I observed that early web-based content seemed to be primarily paper-based content transferred, more or less as is, to the web. It seemed to me that as with many other technologies of the past 150 years, such as photography, records (sound recordings), movies (motion pictures), radio, and television, most web content creators were stuck in the paradigms of the "old media."

I was determined to think "outside the box" about content creation for this new media and, as my work at that time was primarily in educational publishing, I first focused on what I hoped would be new paradigms for teaching and learning in light of the web. Sad to say, efforts (by me and others) to get the educational publishing industry to embrace genuinely new and powerful approaches to educational content creation and delivery have, by and large, failed. After observing the use of computer technology in K-12 education for more than thirty years, my personal judgment is that most such uses are, at best, extensions of 19th century pedagogy and technology.

Meanwhile, I decided to apply my thoughts about a new paradigm for content creation and publishing to my avocation, writing fiction. Here, I found a different sort of obstacle: for many years, my ideas for web-based fiction were ahead of the web content-creation tools available to writers who might not be techies. In the last few years, however, with the advent of blogs and media file-sharing sites, there are beginning to be some web authoring tools that may address the needs of writers seeking to create works specifically for this new medium.

In the meantime, traditional book (and other media) publishers have as yet to figure out their place in this "brave new world" of web-based content creation and distribution.

So, I have begun to work with a small group of writers to think outside the box about creating and publishing original works over the web, both fiction and non-fiction, for adults and young adults, for the consumer and the school markets.

My hope is that in the very near future, there will be even more flexible tools than the ones available today and that business models will emerge that enable web publishing to include legal "fair use" sharing of proprietary video, photo, and text content.

One's crystal ball need not extend very far to see that some form of wireless, digital communication is already becoming the primary medium for popular culture; should not, then, fiction writers be figuring out how best to use this medium to portray life in all the richness and variability heretofore done largely through novels, short stories, poetry, and film?

For my part, I have begun to publish several webnovels in serial form, emulating the 19th century practice of doing so though newspapers and magazines, which for most people were the equivalent of the 20th century's radio and TV. I hope that you will join me in this endeavor, at least as "readers" and critics, perhaps as fellow authors and/or contributors.

----PHK