Forms are everywhere. They are the part of the web where the money
gets made, where the content becomes “user-generated.” Without forms the web is
merely a publishing medium—a set of linked-together pages created by interested
parties. With them, the web becomes the white-hot center of public discourse
and the world’s largest bazaar.
The forms must cry out to be filled. There are traditionally two
ways to enter text in a form: the element, which is typically a
single line, good for capturing your name, your street address, and the like,
and the
The more ease, the more likely it is that people will tweet their
thoughts, or submit their purchases (or tweet their purchases). There are
college programs in user experience, forums and conferences on making buttons
irresistibly clickable. Once you make one text box you can have a million
people fill it in (or a billion). Collectively we’ve made a web that is
hell-bent on making more of itself, on getting people to fill in the box. Every
tweet is its own little document, and every one could carry some advertising.
So making it incredibly easy to tweet is one of the major movers of Twitter.
Amazon without the reviews would be just a big store. With the
reviews it becomes a bizarre document of human opinion. There is a drama to
reviewing, and a prioritization. First, Amazon lets you choose a star rating.
You can select gold-colored stars, one to five, a completely arbitrary number
that happens to correspond to the fingers of the hand. By doing this and
choosing a star you have given that company an incomparable gift: You’ve
expressed an opinion, presumably as a rational consumer, and you’ve done it in
such a way that your thought can be converted to an integer.
And each review is a
testament to the human desire to be heard. In particular, to be heard at a
slightly louder volume than the branding and back-of-book promotional copy of a
given item. To register delight or disgust. So they fill out the form.
What a weird human thing to do. Like hobos leaving chalk markings.
Nice lady lives here. Don’t buy this shampoo. Avoid this book if you want a
happy ending. Beware mean dog. Who are we helping when we fill out that
box? Mankind? Our peers? Our children? Are we just whiny babies seeking to
assert some fabricated dominance, or does reviewing a product online make us
part of some greater human fellowship, communicating our humanity to whatever
stranger may follow along the same path?
People will give you
their opinions for free. And the engine to transmute opinions into data is the
web form, so the people building your web site of necessity reach for one of
those. And since computers can reproduce the same pages over and over, the
forms reproduce as well, millions and billions of times, and people learn that
they can fill them out and that their reviews themselves will be reviewed
(thumbs up, thumbs down), forms upon forms.
Forms are everywhere. They are the part of the web where the money
gets made, where the content becomes “user-generated.” Without forms the web is
merely a publishing medium—a set of linked-together pages created by interested
parties. With them, the web becomes the white-hot center of public discourse
and the world’s largest bazaar.
The forms must cry out to be filled. There are traditionally two
ways to enter text in a form: the element, which is typically a
single line, good for capturing your name, your street address, and the like,
and the
The more ease, the more likely it is that people will tweet their
thoughts, or submit their purchases (or tweet their purchases). There are
college programs in user experience, forums and conferences on making buttons
irresistibly clickable. Once you make one text box you can have a million
people fill it in (or a billion). Collectively we’ve made a web that is
hell-bent on making more of itself, on getting people to fill in the box. Every
tweet is its own little document, and every one could carry some advertising.
So making it incredibly easy to tweet is one of the major movers of Twitter.
Amazon without the reviews would be just a big store. With the
reviews it becomes a bizarre document of human opinion. There is a drama to
reviewing, and a prioritization. First, Amazon lets you choose a star rating.
You can select gold-colored stars, one to five, a completely arbitrary number
that happens to correspond to the fingers of the hand. By doing this and
choosing a star you have given that company an incomparable gift: You’ve
expressed an opinion, presumably as a rational consumer, and you’ve done it in
such a way that your thought can be converted to an integer.
And each review is a
testament to the human desire to be heard. In particular, to be heard at a
slightly louder volume than the branding and back-of-book promotional copy of a
given item. To register delight or disgust. So they fill out the form.
What a weird human thing to do. Like hobos leaving chalk markings.
Nice lady lives here. Don’t buy this shampoo. Avoid this book if you want a
happy ending. Beware mean dog. Who are we helping when we fill out that
box? Mankind? Our peers? Our children? Are we just whiny babies seeking to
assert some fabricated dominance, or does reviewing a product online make us
part of some greater human fellowship, communicating our humanity to whatever
stranger may follow along the same path?
People will give you
their opinions for free. And the engine to transmute opinions into data is the
web form, so the people building your web site of necessity reach for one of
those. And since computers can reproduce the same pages over and over, the
forms reproduce as well, millions and billions of times, and people learn that
they can fill them out and that their reviews themselves will be reviewed
(thumbs up, thumbs down), forms upon forms.
