More Letters!
Late for the Party
Love the Man in the Uniform
A Morning in the Life
Give This Man a Flamethrower
Being "Sticky" Is Not Enough
Don't Me.Com
Under the Volcanoes
The Cyberslouch
e-Slacking
Stock-Suck

For now, I'm rooting for the Internet rebels, the Electronic Frontierists, the cryptographers and Napsters, the elusive folks who run www.rtmark.com, as well as the nameless hackers who relentlessly embarrass those who attempt to put borders around the Internet I’m a sucker for the underdogs, still hoping for an upset, and looking forward to Kill Your Internet bumper stickers.

Why? Our insatiable, consumption-driven economy has but a few bites left of its latest entrée, the worldwide web. The Internet’s earnest creators were thrown a bone and did as they were told, while the general populace, obsessing over a real-life version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, cheered and continues to cheer for the capitalist scavengers. Formerly known as the information highway, today’s Internet is all about e-commerce. And so we can now make six-figure stock trades on the web, but voting online is not yet an option.

The e-Carpet Bagger’s Holy Grail is for the Internet to become the third millennium’s replacement for television. With on-demand Internet TV, you'll be able to watch anything, anytime. In return, your every move will be monitored and catalogued, such that the advertising you're shown can be fine-tuned to match your specific consuming proclivities.

It follows that as technology advances, eventually even the entertainment content will be fine-tuned. The heroine will appear to have red hair instead of blonde, and she will drink Pepsi instead of Coke, if the master consumer database says these particular things turn you on. Entertainment and commercials will merge into one big lifestyle infomercial.--Daniel Kite, a scientist and musician who currently works at a dotcom in Seattle. (dan@noisetank.com)