Users will be tempted to subscribe to any channel they might possibly want to see. And everyone would be happy. Everyone, that is, except the mailman, who would soon be overwhelmed by thousands of pounds worth of extra magazines to deliver. So you can imagine what's going to happen to traffic on the Net as millions of users begin setting up their spanking new web browsers to download hundreds of megabytes of data they otherwise wouldn't have requested. While that might please Time Warner, Disney and the other media conglomerates pumping out channels, it's not a pretty picture for people who don't want to see their Net-connected computers turn into television sets.
Channels also rob web sites of their immediacy.
But if I settle for the version they push to my desktop, the stories might even be older than the ones in the morning newspaper. Perhaps this wouldn't seem so bad if channels were being used to deliver uniquely satisfying content. But every channel I've seen so far has been a blinking, swooshing testament to the domination of style over substance. Microsoft has encouraged developers to build their channels with dynamic HTML, which allows text and pictures to fade in and out of view, move around the screen and respond to either the passing of time or the touch of a mouse pointer. For now, though, most of the channels seem fascinated by headlines that either fade or fly across the screen - not exactly a thrill a minute.