In the headlong rush to commercialize the Internet since the early 1990s many communities have remained unserved or underserved. These exclusions have been the result of pre-existing conditions of low income, lack of training, inadequate infrastructure, distance, isolation and other causes. They have been sporadic and capricious, and many such excluded groups and individuals have been left bewildered when they contemplate the wired world that swirls around them.

Furthermore, even among the participating segments of Internet society, there is a divide between the producing class and the consuming class. This divide has both economic, social and political implications.

Producers are able to help define the new information space. Their ability to use the tools of the 'net - the alphabet soup of HTMLPHPMYSQLMSNASPUNIXLINUX.NET - lets them package their ideas, promote their products and push the envelope of personal power.

Consumers may only see what others transmit. They read, listen and react, but they cannot create or transmit ideas or information beyond that which is requested by the producers - like personal and financial data - for use by the producers, who may gain economically, socially or politically by the new knowledge they thus accumulate.

This is not a new phenomenon. Every innovation necessarily divides the world briefly into haves and have-nots, as production and distribution are expanded until demand has been satisfied. It is an amoral process that originates in the accidents of how, where and when innovations occur.

The Internet and the Worldwide Web, are different, however, in that the rates of adoption and easy of use are unparalleled. The boundary between producers and consumers is permeable, and the investment needed to become a producer is within the grasp of the majority of people in developed societies and to a significant and growing fraction worldwide.

At Clark IP (CIP), we've striven to increase the permeability of the barriers to being a producer as well as a consumer in this new marketplace. Our systems have been developed to enable people with a need to publish their own information, whether for business or education or public service, to quickly and easily start out with little more than a web browser and an idea to communicate with others who want to read or receive their ideas, services, products, and educational materials.

The publishing services we call CIP Sitemaker and CIP Journalmaker are simple, browser-based systems for transferring knowledge and information via the Worldwide Web. Both individual web sites and complex networks of interrelated sites can be built on the platform.

The information in individual sites is created and managed by the owner of that site. As a site owner one is able to create web pages that present the ideas, services and products one wants to share with others. Each owner can join communities that function as networked communities to serve the needs of related communities like business or education or community affairs.

In order to provide the highest quality services and products each owner is affiliated with a sponsoring organization. Each sponsor provides an electronic point of entry for its natural constituents. Sponsors may be schools, churches, fraternal or professional organizations, or business associations that want to lower the barriers to entry for their members. The WWW makes it easy for a site that originates in one community to link itself to other communities. Finally, because all sites in the system are fundamentally equal, it is possible for any owner to grow beyond the original network and become an independent node hosting a new community of related publishers. No one is the dog and no one is the tail; all the sites wag each other!

The cost of entry is very low. A very comprehensive site, numerous general information pages plus structured data like calendars, newsletters, photo albumes..., is available for the equivalent of a daily cup of coffee (US prices). Implementation and training are a fraction of the cost of custom site development, as the shared platform lets every user build upon the skills and ideas of all the others and share the cost of continuing improvements in the system infrastructure.

No special skills, no new hardware and no new software are needed. Even a privately owned computer is unnecessary; just find an unused machine after hours or in a public facility.

What does it take to build a site on our systems? The desire to do so, a few minutes of instruction, and a couple of hours practice.

What does it take to turn a simple site into a great site? Time. Preceded by planning.