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receive the message. When the receiving telephone gets the message, an indicator is provided to the user to indicate that the message is waiting. It is then up to the user to display the message on the handset.

Facsimile transmissions are handled in a similar fashion. When using a scanning facsimile machine at the input mechanism, the sender enters the network address, which is the telephone number of the destination facsimile machine, and starts the transmission. Depending on the type of receiving equipment being used, the pages of transmitted material may either be printed directly to paper on reception or they may be stored with only an indicator sent on to the intended receiving person. And, of course, standard telephony involves the caller entering an address in the form of a telephone number of the intended recipient of the call. If the receiving unit is not busy, then an indicator lets the person know that a call is waiting; accordingly, the phone rings. Each of these examples illustrates the sender as being the originator of the interaction. Content is either directly delivered to the recipient, or an indicator lets the recipient know that content is pending.

The PUSH model relative to Web services generally involves a Web server providing content to a user at the discretion of the server rather than of the user. In the concept of the model that Gleick discussed, one’s interest in certain topics would become known over time, through a public compilation of past transactions that would become available to content providers, and the content providers would then automatically, without expressed invocation on the part of the user, deliver content.

In the PULL model, the recipient of content indicates a needs based stimulus to effect the subsequent provision of content; someone who needs something asks for it to be provided. If we don’t want to deal with live telephone calls, then we allow our voice-mail systems to receive the call and queue up messages from the senders. We are then able to listen to our messages at a time of our choosing. In other words, we can pull the waiting messages whenever it is convenient for us.

Probably the more common PULL model example is that which we experience through our Web browsers. The paradigm for this interaction is essentially an imperative, “Show me that!” When we issue this command, we indicate direction to a page that we’d like to look at by specifying a universal resource locator (say http://www.nyt.com for the New York Times) to our Web browser. The browser then proceeds to execute a standard protocol through which the Web server defined by the universal resource locator is contacted and the particular Web page that we demanded to see is displayed on our screen. As the facilities to effect commerce have evolved, as we’ve become empowered to purchase content on or through the Internet, the paradigm has expanded to include the subsequent command “Provide me that!” or, more succinctly put and appropriate to the consumer role, “Gimme!” This is perhaps the defining characteristic in transforming the more basic Internet into the Web.

Sustenance sans Solace

The Web today can provide content that maps to sustenance in varying degrees across the full range of the human needs hierarchy. However, while the Web is capable of offering this wide range of sustenance, it does not yet facilitate the full range of social ecosystem mechanisms that have proven so necessary to the species in the actual incorporation of such sustenance. Through the Web, our sensory facilities present us the fact or the illusion of sustenance, or perhaps more appropriately stated, they provide us various projections of the existence of sustenance, but we are

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