Attention Webmasters: 1996 Is Calling!

I was listening to Justice Talking on the way back from an excursion out to look at digital SLR cameras this evening. The program was wrapping up and the host of the show was listing off the crew contributions and their roles. She rattled off the producer, the sound engineer, etc., and then she mentioned the webmaster.

"Webmaster?!", I exclaimed, "That's sooo 1990's! Who the heck is called a webmaster anymore?" The thought really evoked images from high school when it was cool to say that you were the webmaster of some site. This was definitely up there as far as geek-cred was concerned. But now? Not so much.  The name lends it self to some old guy with a beard dialing up to AOL to FTP all his uppercase-tagged HTML files with goofy animated GIFs.

I have a cold right now so my voice is deep and raspy.  In the car with my wife I mustered the best Don LaFontaine voice I could, exclaiming, "In a world...in a place...long ago...I am...THE WEBMASTER!" No reaction. "Hackers Part II: The Webmaster Strikes Back!".  Crickets.  Sometimes I think the purpose of my life is to make my wife's eyes roll.  I know she's laughing on the inside.

Anyway, here is what we call them today: Web Producer.  Web Developer.  Web Content Writer.  I guess these are all real professions that the lone Webmaster once fulfilled back in the wild days of the web.  But this is 2007.  We can get rid of the old-fashion moniker already, because Webmasters, 1996 is calling.