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The Solution
The solution is for graphic designers to begin exploring the narrative possibilities of the Web as a communications medium. Where to begin the exploration? Well, one solution is to begin exploring all the things the Web can do that other media can't do. Hint: The Web is interactive. Hint: Web narratives need not be linear. Hint: Web narratives need not be predominantly text-based. (They need not even be predominantly graphics-based.) Hint: The Web can incorporate several media at once. Hint: Different media (audio, video) affect people in different ways. Hint: Surfing is, by its very nature, an intimate experience. Only one person at a time can click a mouse, whereas several people at a time can watch a television or a movie screen. Hint: The more power a user has to control the narrative himself, the more a user will "own" that narrative.
Please, let's grow this medium up, if for no other reason than to keep it from becoming boring. I'd much rather talk about paradigmatic user-enabled plot structures than WAP-enabled mobile palm devices.
In the end, as has been said a million times, the Web is about the "user" experience. Do our users want to be engaged around the campfire as we enthusiastically and skillfully tell how we miraculously escaped the wrath of Billy the Kid, or do they want to listen as we drone on and on about how tall our mule is and what it ate for dinner that night?
Without a compelling narrative voice that incorporates the specific strengths of this medium, we might just as soon be machines talking to machines, while our users vacate our dry and boring sites to engage in yet another round of interactive elf bowling.