The Internet has now become a concrete entity which no longer needs highway analogies. However, electronic publishing is different to paper publishing in many ways and the analogy cannot be taken too far, or opportunities for new ways to use the technology will be missed. Publishing merges with dialogue in the on-line environment. My experience has been that large formal organisations, such as computer societies and government agencies, have difficulty reconciling the central control they would like with publishing and the interactive nature of the 'net. Traditionally structured publications when put on-line look very dull.
Readers turn away from dull unresponsive publications.
It may not be that readers are any more demanding with on-line publications, but that they have better means to put their views. Also readers are more demanding as they know that any individual can publish on-line, in competition with the largest organisations and Governments, if they wish. A number of new ACS publications and parts of old ones are now routinely placed on-line . Both are important and technical networking does not work if the people issues are not considered. In the last two years the wide scale implementation of the Internet has rendered discussion of what should be the public data network infrastructure largely obsolete.