Where are the Mahirs of yesteryear?: ‘Last week, in what was surely the strangest obituary for the Web yet, the New York Times published a feature complaining that the Web is now officially washed up because it no longer provides a sufficiently diverting stream of trivial amusements.

“What attracted many people to the Web in the mid-1990’s,” read the lead article in the Times‘ Circuits section, “were the bizarre and idiosyncratic sites that began as private obsessions and swiftly grew into popular attractions” — bagatelles like the Cambridge Coffee Cam, the Fish Tank Cam, the Jennicam, the Telegarden or the ill-fated Web soap opera “The Spot.” (The latter, hardly a “private obsession,” was a thoroughly commercial undertaking from day one, but never mind.)’ I agree with this response from Salon‘s managing editor Scott Rosenberg, essentially that there’s still plenty of frivolity on the Web. Rosenberg turns to the Daypop top links list to show that what’s hot at the moment is still pretty zany. For example, right now he cites a list of Google misspellings of “Britney’ and the “weirdest computer you’ve ever seen” link. But I wonder if the purveyors of triviality may be starting to feel a little disenfranchised. An immature medium will tolerate any content as early adopters explore and play with the potentials of the medium. That’s part of what geek culture was about. But as the novelty of the Web has worn off and the mom-‘n’-pop Web-using public has become familiar with its sensibility as a medium, the urgency is to satisfy a desire for content. Ummm, how else to explain the ascendency of shopping and porn sites (as well as the increasing articulateness of the weblog culture)? Although: “A survey of internet browsing habits has seen people’s interest in online sex fall as business, travel and job searches supplant the search for smut.” silicon.com