Jon Udell: Well-formed writing and information routing
Jon Udell writes about the way good semantics have allowed him to get more out of his writing. It's an interesting parallel point to the conversation occuring amonst such heavy-hitters as Kottke, Mark, and Zeldman. The discussion revolves around the correlation (or lack thereof) between valid markup and semantics.
I've always been a supporter of standards, merely because of the extra control things like CSS give us over the design and layout of our pages. Semantic clarity interests me on a geekier level, having seen demonstrations of its worth such as Mark's posts by citation.
If you look at an industry like publishing, it took a long time for standards to develop and solidify. Although we've benefited from the rapid changes in web development, it may take time for us to reach the stability of other media. In my opinion, web development was so easy in the beginning we created a world full of web developers. As the technology has gotten more complex, offering more options and tools, the weaker animals are being weeded out. Meanwhile, it's the cutting edge developers and visionaries such as those linked above who are pushing the boundaries and helping to define this new medium we know as the web.
I'm all for the fact that anyone can publish, but because I use electricity doesn't mean I can service a circuit panel. Maybe a little survival of the fittest is a good idea.