Heterogeneity
The web can raise the cultural status of one kind of material and lower the status of another. It makes graffiti more elite, and high art more popular. The elite and the popular can coexist on the web in such varied forms as:
The web is technologically and culturally heterogeneous.
For that reason, design for the web must be heterogeneous. One home page may introduce us to an elementary school in Seattle; another may connect us with Apple Computer. Pages may be the work of an untrained individual or of a design team hired by a large corporation. There are now and should continue to be very different standards of design for these varied productions. Large corporations can hire highly skilled designers, but their designs may lack the daring that may be found on an individual's home page.
Amateur and even unattractive design should be allowed to flourish on the net. In the Middle Ages there were many workaday manuscripts as well as a few presentation copies. In the era of print, there have been paperbacks as well as deluxe editions. The same should apply a fortiori to the Internet--precisely because it is more heterogeneous than previous technologies.
The question remains: what is the future of web design? How will design grow beyond its first steps?