Never mind that all those graphics add nothing but take forever to load, and the textured backgrounds make the text nearly impossible to read. This is just pop culture, of course, and a lot of the blame can be laid at the feet of professional advertising folks and Web page consultants on the prowl for business. They may even be correct, in general, that this sort of thing is what the masses respond best to. But count me out, please. Lastly there is the white hot competition on the technology side to gain advantage from ever more complex techno-toys.
Technology companies live by convincing everyone that their technology is the coolest.
Well, all that stuff may be amusing to adolescents of any age, and undoubtedly makes for great interactive networked games. But I'll pass. At least until I figure out how to use it to actually communicate ideas that seem important to me. In the meantime I'll continue to eschew ostentatious display. I don't mean to deprecate this either, since one might make the same observation for even the most respected authors of literature or composers of symphonies.