Ars longa, vita brevis

The World Wide Web defines itself as a space that belongs to all, and it precludes a sense of the past.
The past (the tradition that leads to our electronic present) is, for the Web user, irrelevant, since all that counts is what is currently displayed. Compared to a book that betrays its age in its physical aspect, a text called up on the screen has no history. Electronic space is frontierless. The Web is quasi-instantaneous:it occupies no time except the nightmare of a constant present. All surface and no volume, all present and no past, the Web aspires to be (advertises itself as ) every user's home, in which communication is possible with every other user at the speed of thought. That is its main characteristic : speed.

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