The Metaphors of the Net

I. The Genetic Blueprint

Hand Held Credit Card Machine

A decade after the invention of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee is promoting the "Semantic Web". The Internet hitherto is a repository of digital content. It has a rudimentary list theory and very crude data location services. As a sad result, most of the article is invisible and inaccessible. Moreover, the Internet manipulates strings of symbols, not logical or semantic propositions. In other words, the Net compares values but does not know the meaning of the values it thus manipulates. It is unable to construe strings, to infer new facts, to deduce, induce, derive, or otherwise realize what it is doing. In short, it does not understand language. Run an ambiguous term by any hunt engine and these shortcomings become painfully evident. This lack of comprehension of the semantic foundations of its raw material (data, information) preclude applications and databases from sharing resources and feeding each other. The Internet is discrete, not continuous. It resembles an archipelago, with users hopping from island to island in a frantic hunt for relevancy.

Even visionaries like Berners-Lee do not explore an "intelligent Web". They are naturally proposing to let users, article creators, and web developers assign visible meta-tags ("name of hotel") to fields, or to strings of symbols ("Hilton"). These meta-tags (arranged in semantic and relational "ontologies" - lists of metatags, their meanings and how they report to each other) will be read by assorted applications and allow them to process the linked strings of symbols correctly (place the word "Hilton" in your address book under "hotels"). This will make information retrieval more sufficient and reliable and the information retrieved is bound to be more relevant and amenable to higher level processing (statistics, the development of heuristic rules, etc.). The shift is from Html (whose tags are implicated with optic appearances and article indexing) to languages such as the Darpa Agent Markup Language, Oil (Ontology Inference Layer or Ontology Interchange Language), or even Xml (whose tags are implicated with article taxonomy, document structure, and semantics). This would bring the Internet closer to the excellent library card catalogue.

Even in its current, pre-semantic, hyperlink-dependent, phase, the Internet brings to mind Richard Dawkins' seminal work "The Selfish Gene" (Oup, 1976). This would be doubly true for the Semantic Web.

Dawkins suggested to generalize the principle of natural option to a law of the survival of the stable. "A stable thing is a variety of atoms which is permanent adequate or base adequate to deserve a name". He then proceeded to report the emergence of "Replicators" - molecules which created copies of themselves. The Replicators that survived in the competition for scarce raw materials were characterized by high longevity, fecundity, and copying-fidelity. Replicators (now known as "genes") constructed "survival machines" (organisms) to shield them from the vagaries of an ever-harsher environment.

This is very reminiscent of the Internet. The "stable things" are Html coded web pages. They are replicators - they generate copies of themselves every time their "web address" (Url) is clicked. The Html coding of a web page can be concept of as "genetic material". It contains all the information needed to reproduce the page. And, exactly as in nature, the higher the longevity, fecundity (measured in links to the web page from other web sites), and copying-fidelity of the Html code - the higher its chances to survive (as a web page).

Replicator molecules (Dna) and replicator Html have one thing in base - they are both packaged information. In the accepted context (the right biochemical "soup" in the case of Dna, the right software application in the case of Html code) - this information generates a "survival machine" (organism, or a web page).

The Semantic Web will only growth the longevity, fecundity, and copying-fidelity or the basic code (in this case, Oil or Xml instead of Html). By facilitating many more interactions with many other web pages and databases - the basic "replicator" code will ensure the "survival" of "its" web page (=its survival machine). In this analogy, the web page's "Dna" (its Oil or Xml code) contains "single genes" (semantic meta-tags). The whole process of life is the unfolding of a kind of Semantic Web.

In a prophetic paragraph, Dawkins described the Internet:

"The first thing to grasp about a contemporary replicator is that it is extremely gregarious. A survival engine is a car containing not just one gene but many thousands. The design of a body is a cooperative speculation of such intricacy that it is roughly impossible to disentangle the gift of one gene from that of another. A given gene will have many separate effects on quite separate parts of the body. A given part of the body will be influenced by many genes and the effect of any one gene depends on interaction with many others...In terms of the analogy, any given page of the plans makes reference to many separate parts of the building; and each page makes sense only in terms of cross-reference to numerous other pages."

What Dawkins neglected in his foremost work is the concept of the Network. Habitancy congregate in cities, mate, and reproduce, thus providing genes with new "survival machines". But Dawkins himself suggested that the new Replicator is the "meme" - an idea, belief, technique, technology, work of art, or bit of information. Memes use human brains as "survival machines" and they hop from brain to brain and across time and space ("communications") in the process of cultural (as safe bet from biological) evolution. The Internet is a latter day meme-hopping playground. But, more importantly, it is a Network. Genes move from one box to other straight through a linear, serial, tedious process which involves continued periods of one on one gene shuffling ("sex") and gestation. Memes use networks. Their propagation is, therefore, parallel, fast, and all-pervasive. The Internet is a manifestation of the growing predominance of memes over genes. And the Semantic Web may be to the Internet what synthetic brain is to excellent computing. We may be on the threshold of a self-aware Web.

2. The Internet as a Chaotic Library

A. The qoute of Cataloguing

The Internet is an assortment of billions of pages which contain information. Some of them are visible and others are generated from incommunicable databases by users' requests ("Invisible Internet").

The Internet exhibits no discernible order, classification, or categorization. Amazingly, as opposed to "classical" libraries, no one has yet invented a (sorely needed) Internet cataloguing accepted (remember Dewey?). Some sites undoubtedly apply the Dewey Decimal theory to their contents (Suite101). Others default to a directory buildings (Open Directory, Yahoo!, Look Smart and others).

Had such a accepted existed (an agreed upon numerical cataloguing method) - each site could have self-classified. Sites would have an interest to do so to growth their visibility. This, naturally, would have eliminated the need for today's clunky, incomplete and (highly) inefficient hunt engines.

Thus, a site whose amount starts with 900 will be immediately identified as dealing with history and multiple classification will be encouraged to allow finer cross-sections to emerge. An example of such an emerging technology of "self classification" and "self-publication" (though exiguous to scholarly resources) is the "Academic resource Channel" by Scindex.

Moreover, users will not be required to remember reams of numbers. Future browsers will be akin to catalogues, very much like the applications used in contemporary day libraries. Compare this utopia to the current dystopy. Users struggle with mounds of irrelevant material to ultimately reach a partial and disappointing destination. At the same time, there likely are web sites which exactly match the poor user's needs. Yet, what currently determines the chances of a happy encounter in the middle of user and article - are the whims of the exact hunt engine used and things like meta-tags, headlines, a fee paid, or the right opening sentences.

B. Screen vs. Page

The computer screen, because of corporal limitations (size, the fact that it has to be scrolled) fails to effectively compete with the printed page. The latter is still the most ingenious medium yet invented for the storehouse and publish of textual information. Granted: a computer screen is best at highlighting assorted units of information. So, these differing capacities draw the battle lines: structures (printed pages) versus units (screen), the continuous and undoubtedly reversible (print) versus the assorted (screen).

The clarification lies in seeing an sufficient way to translate computer screens to printed matter. It is hard to believe, but no such thing exists. Computer screens are still hostile to off-line printing. In other words: if a user copies information from the Internet to his word processor (or vice versa, for that matter) - he ends up with a fragmented, garbage-filled and non-aesthetic document.

Very few site developers try to do something about it - even fewer succeed.

C. Dynamic vs. Static Interactions

One of the biggest mistakes of article suppliers is that they do not supply a "static-dynamic interaction".

Internet-based article can now undoubtedly interact with other media (e.g., Cd-Roms) and with non-Pc platforms (Pda's, movable phones).

Examples abound:

A Cd-Rom shopping list interacts with a Web site to allow the user to order a product. The list could also be updated straight through the site (as is the custom with Cd-Rom encyclopedias). The advantages of the Cd-Rom are clear: very fast access time (dozens of times faster than the access to a Web site using a dial up connection) and a data storehouse capacity hundreds of times bigger than the mean Web page.

Another example:

A Pda plug-in disposable chip containing hundreds of advertisements or a "yellow pages". The consumer selects the ad or entry that she wants to see and connects to the Internet to view a relevant video. She could then also have an interactive chat (or a conference) with a salesperson, receive information about the company, about the ad, about the advertising branch which created the ad - and so on.

Cd-Rom based encyclopedias (such as the Britannica, or the Encarta) already contain hyperlinks which carry the user to sites superior by an Editorial Board.

Note

Cd-Roms are probably a doomed medium. storehouse capacity continually increases exponentially and, within a year, desktops with 80 Gb hard disks will be a base sight. Moreover, the much heralded Network Computer - the stripped down version of the personal computer - will put at the disposal of the mean user terabytes in storehouse capacity and the processing power of a supercomputer. What separates computer users from this utopia is the communication bandwidth. With the introduction of radio and satellite broadband services, Dsl and Adsl, cable modems coupled with advanced compression standards - video (on demand), audio and data will be available quickly and plentifully.

The Cd-Rom, on the other hand, is not mobile. It requires facility and the utilization of sophisticated hardware and software. This is no user kindly push technology. It is nerd-oriented. As a result, Cd-Roms are not an immediate medium. There is a long time lapse in the middle of the occasion of purchase and the occasion the user accesses the data. Compare this to a book or a magazine. Data in these oldest of media is abruptly available to the user and they allow for easy and literal, "back" and "forward" functions.

Perhaps the biggest mistake of Cd-Rom manufacturers has been their inability to offer an integrated hardware and software package. Cd-Roms are not compact. A Walkman is a ageement hardware-cum-software package. It is undoubtedly transportable, it is thin, it contains numerous, user-friendly, sophisticated functions, it provides immediate access to data. So does the discman, or the Mp3-man, or the new generation of e-books (e.g., E-Ink's). This cannot be said about the Cd-Rom. By tying its Future to the obsolete concept of stand-alone, expensive, inefficient and technologically unreliable personal computers - Cd-Roms have sentenced themselves to oblivion (with the potential exception of reference material).

D. Online Reference

A visit to the on-line Encyclopaedia Britannica demonstrates some of the tremendous, mind boggling possibilities of online reference - as well as some of the obstacles.

Each entry in this titanic work of reference is hyperlinked to relevant Web sites. The sites are determined screened. Links are available to data in assorted forms, together with audio and video. All things can be copied to the hard disk or to a R/W Cd.

This is a new concept of a knowledge centre - not just a heap of material. The article is modular and continuously enriched. It can be linked to a voice Q&A centre. Queries by subscribers can be answered by e-mail, by fax, posted on the site, hard copies can be sent by post. This "Trivial Pursuit" or "homework" aid could be very beloved - there is vital appetite for "Just in Time Information". The Library of Congress - together with a few other libraries - is in the process of development just such a aid available to the group (Cdrs - Collaborative Digital Reference Service).

E. Derivative Content

The Internet is an titanic depot of archives of freely accessible, or even group domain, information.

With a minimal investment, this information can be gathered into coherent, theme oriented, cheap compilations (on Cd-Roms, print, e-books or other media).

F. E-Publishing

The Internet is by far the world's largest publishing platform. It incorporates Faqs (Q&A's regarding roughly every technical matter in the world), e-zines (electronic magazines), the electronic versions of print dailies and periodicals (in conjunction with on-line news and information services), reference material, e-books, monographs, articles, minutes of discussions ("threads"), seminar proceedings, and much more besides.

The Internet represents major advantages to publishers. Think the electronic version of a p-zine.

Publishing an e-zine promotes the sales of the printed edition, it helps sign on subscribers and it leads to the sale of advertising space. The electronic archive function (see next section) saves the need to file back issues, the corporal space required to do so and the irritating hunt for data items.

The Future trend is a combined subscription to both the electronic edition (mainly for the archival value and the quality to hyperlink to additional information) and to the print one (easier to browse the current issue). The Economist is already gift free access to its electronic archives as an inducement to its print subscribers.

The electronic daily presents other advantages:

It allows for immediate feedback and for flowing, roughly real-time, communication in the middle of writers and readers. The electronic version, therefore, acquires a gyroscopic function: a navigation instrument, all the time indicating deviations from the "right" course. The article can be abruptly updated and breaking news incorporated in older content.

Specialty hand held devices already allow for downloading and storehouse of vast quantities of data (up to 4000 print pages). The user gains access to libraries containing hundreds of texts, adapted to be downloaded, stored and read by the exact device. Again, a convergence of standards is to be staggering in this field as well (the final contenders will probably be Adobe's Pdf against Microsoft's Ms-Reader).

Currently, e-books are dichotomously treated either as:

Continuation of print books (p-books) by other means, or as a whole new publishing universe.

Since p-books are a more favorable medium then e-books - they will prevail in any simple "medium replacement" or "medium displacement" battle.

In other words, if publishers will persist in the simple and simple conversion of p-books to e-books - then e-books are doomed. They are naturally inferior and cannot offer the comfort, tactile delights, browseability and scanability of p-books.

But e-books - being digital - open up a vista of hitherto neglected possibilities. These will only be enhanced and enriched by the introduction of e-paper and e-ink. Among them:

Hyperlinks within the e-book and without it - to web content, reference works, etc.; Embedded instant shopping and ordering links; Divergent, user-interactive, decision driven plotlines; Interaction with other e-books (using a wireless standard) - collaborative authoring or reading groups; Interaction with other e-books - gaming and community activities; Automatically or periodically updated content; Multimedia; Database, Favourites, Annotations, and History Maintenance (archival records of reading habits, shopping habits, interaction with other readers, plot linked decisions and much more); Automatic and embedded audio conversion and translation capabilities; Full wireless piconetworking and scatternetworking capabilities. The technology is still not fully there. Wars rage in both the wireless and the e-book realms. Platforms compete. Standards clash. Gurus debate. But convergence is safe bet and with it the e-book of the future.

G. The Archive Function

The Internet is also the world's biggest cemetery: tens of thousands of deadbeat sites, still accessible - the "Ghost Sites" of this electronic frontier.

This, in a way, is group memory. One of the Internet's main functions will be to reserve and exchange knowledge straight through time. It is called "memory" in biology - and "archive" in library science. The history of the Internet is being documented by hunt engines (Google) and specialized services (Alexa) alike.

3. The Internet as a group Nervous System

Drawing a comparison from the development of a human child - the human race has just commenced to design its neural system.

The Internet fulfils all the functions of the Nervous theory in the body and is, both functionally and structurally, pretty similar. It is decentralized, redundant (each part can serve as functional backup in case of malfunction). It hosts information which is accessible straight through assorted paths, it contains a memory function, it is multimodal (multimedia - textual, visual, audio and animation).

I believe that the comparison is not superficial and that learning the functions of the brain (from infancy to adulthood) is likely to shed light on the Future of the Net itself. The Net - exactly like the nervous theory - provides pathways for the transport of goods and services - but also of memes and information, their processing, modeling, and integration.

A. The group Computer

Carrying the metaphor of "a group brain" further, we would expect the processing of information to take place on the Internet, rather than inside the end-user's hardware (the same way that information is processed in the brain, not in the eyes). Desktops will receive results and report with the Net to receive additional clarifications and instructions and to convey information gathered from their environment (mostly, from the user).

Put differently:

In future, servers will contain not only information (as they do today) - but also software applications. The user of an application will not be forced to buy it. He will not be driven into hardware-related expenditures to adapt the ever growing size of applications. He will not find himself wasting his scarce memory and computing resources on passive storage. Instead, he will use a browser to call a central computer. This computer will contain the needed software, broken to its elements (=applets, small applications). Anytime the user wishes to use one of the functions of the application, he will siphon it off the central computer. When ended - he will "return" it. Processing speeds and response times will be such that the user will not feel at all that he is not interacting with his own software (the inquire of proprietary will be very blurred). This technology is available and it provoked a heated debated about the Future shape of the computing manufactures as a whole (desktops - undoubtedly power packs - or network computers, a exiguous more than dumb terminals). access to online applications are already offered to corporate users by Asps (Application aid Providers).

In the last few years, scientists have harnessed the combined power of online Pc's to achieve marvelous feats of distributed parallel processing. Millions of Pcs linked to the net co-process signals from outer space, meteorological data, and solve complicated equations. This is a prime example of a group brain in action.

B. The Intranet - a Logical extension of the group Computer

Lans (Local Area Networks) are no longer a rarity in corporate offices. Wans (wide Area Networks) are used to join together geographically dispersed organs of the same legal entity (branches of a bank, daughter companies of a conglomerate, a sales force). Many Lans and Wans are going wireless.

The wireless intranet/extranet and Lans are the wave of the future. They will slowly eliminate their fixed line counterparts. The Internet offers equal, platform-independent, location-independent and time of day - independent access to corporate memory and nervous system. Sophisticated firewall protection applications safe the privacy and confidentiality of the intranet from all but the most determined and savvy crackers.

The Intranet is an inter-organizational communication network, constructed on the platform of the Internet and it, therefore, enjoys all its advantages. The extranet is open to clients and suppliers as well.

The company's server can be accessed by anyone authorized, from anywhere, at any time (with local - rather than international - communication costs). The user can leave messages (internal e-mail or v-mail), access information - proprietary or group - from it, and partake in "virtual teamwork" (see next chapter).

The development of measures to safeguard server routed inter-organizational communication (firewalls) is the clarification to one of two obstacles to the institutionalization of Intranets. The second qoute is the exiguous bandwidth which does not permit the sufficient exchange of audio (not to mention video).

It is difficult to show the way video conferencing straight through the Internet. Even the voices of discussants who use internet phones (Ip telephony) come out (though very slightly) distorted.

All this did not preclude 95% of the Fortune 1000 from installing intranet. 82% of the rest intend to install one by the end of this year. Medium to big size American firms have 50-100 intranet terminals per every internet one.

One of the greatest advantages of the intranet is the quality to exchange documents in the middle of the assorted parts of an organization. Think Visa: it pushed 2 million documents per day internally in 1996.

An assosication adequate with an intranet can (while protected by firewalls) give its clients or suppliers access to non-classified correspondence, or list systems. Many B2B exchanges and industry-specific purchasing supervision systems are based on extranets.

C. The transport of information - Mail and Chat

The Internet (its e-mail function) is eroding primary mail. 90% of customers with on-line access use e-mail from time to time and 60% work with it regularly. More than 2 billion messages traverse the internet daily.

E-mail applications are available as freeware and are included in all browsers. Thus, the Internet has thoroughly assimilated what used to be a detach service, to the extent that many Habitancy make the mistake of thinking that e-mail is a highlight of the Internet.

The internet will do to phone calls what it has done to mail. Already there are applications (Intel's, Vocaltec's, Net2Phone) which enable the user to show the way a phone conversation straight through his computer. The voice quality has improved. The discussants can cut into each others words, argue and listen to tonal nuances. Today, the parties (two or more) arresting in the conversation must possess the same software and the same (computer) hardware. In the very near future, computer-to-regular phone applications will eliminate this requirement. And, again, simultaneous multi-modality: the user can talk over the phone, see his party, send e-mail, receive messages and exchange documents - without obstructing the flow of the conversation.

The cost of transferring voice will become so negligible that free voice traffic is conceivable in 3-5 years. Data traffic will overtake voice traffic by a wide margin.

The next phase will probably involve virtual reality. Each of the parties will be represented by an "avatar", a 3-D figurine generated by the application (or the user's likeness mapped and superimposed on the the avatar). These figurines will be multi-dimensional: they will possess their own communication patterns, extra habits, history, preferences - in short: their own "personality".

Thus, they will be able to verbalize an "identity" and a consistent pattern of communication which they will design over time.

Such a shape could host a site, accept, welcome and guide visitors, all the time bearing their preferences in its electronic "mind". It could report the news, like the digital anchor "Ananova" does. Visiting sites in the Future is bound to be a much more pleasant affair.

D. The transport of Value - E-cash

In 1996, four corporate giants (Visa, MasterCard, Netscape and Microsoft) agreed on a accepted for effecting derive payments straight through the Internet: Set. Internet manufactures is supposed to mushroom to billion by 2003. Site owners will be able to derive rent from passing visitors - or fees for services provided within the site. Amazon instituted an honour theory to derive donations from visitors. PayPal provides millions of users with cash substitutes. Gradually, the Internet will compete with central banks and banking systems in money creation and transfer.

E. The transport of Interactions - The Virtual Organization

The Internet allows for simultaneous communication and the sufficient exchange of multimedia (video included) files in the middle of an unlimited amount of users. This opens up a vista of mind boggling opportunities which are the real core of the Internet revolution: the virtual collaborative ("Follow the Sun") modes.

Examples:

A group of musicians is able to design music or play it - while spatially and temporally separated;

Advertising agencies are able to co-produce ad campaigns in a real time interaction;

Cinema and Tv films are produced from disparate geographical spots straight through the teamwork of Habitancy who never meet, except straight through the Net.

These examples construe the concept of the "virtual community". Space and time will no longer hinder team collaboration, be it scientific, artistic, cultural, or an ad hoc arrangement for the provision of a aid (a virtual law firm, or accounting office, or a virtual consultancy network). The intranet can also be concept of as a "virtual organization", or a "virtual business".

The virtual mall and the virtual list are prime examples of spatial and temporal liberation.

In 1998, there were well over 300 active virtual malls on the Internet. In 2000, they were frequented by 46 million shoppers, who shopped in them for goods and services.

The virtual mall is an Internet "space" (pages) wherein "shops" are located. These shops offer their wares using visual, audio and textual means. The visitor passes straight through a virtual "gate" or storefront and examines the merchandise on offer, until he reaches a buying decision. Then he engages in a feedback process: he pays (with a credit card), buys the product, and waits for it to arrive by mail (or downloads it).

The manufacturers of digital products (intellectual property such as e-books or software) have begun selling their merchandise on-line, as file downloads. Yet, slow communications speeds, competing file formats and reader standards, and exiguous bandwidth - constrain the growth potential of this mode of sale. Once resolved - intellectual property will be sold directly from the Net, on-line. Until such time, the mediation of the Post Office is still required. As long as this is the state of the art, the virtual mall is nothing but a glorified computerized mail list or Buying Channel, the only disagreement being the exceptionally assorted inventory.

Websites which started as "specialty stores" are fast transforming themselves into multi-purpose virtual malls. Amazon.com, for instance, has bought into a virtual pharmacy and into other virtual businesses. It is now selling music, video, electronics and many other products. It started as a bookstore.

This contrasts with a much more creative idea: the virtual catalogue. It is a form of narrowcasting (as opposed to broadcasting): a surgically literal, targeting of potential consumer audiences. Each group of profiled consumers (no matter how small) is fitted with their own - digitally generated - catalogue. This is updated daily: the variety of wares on offer (adjusted to reflect list levels, consumer preferences, and goods in transit) - and prices (sales, discounts, box deals) turn in real time. Amazon has incorporated many of these features on its web site. The user enters its web site and there delineates his consumption profile and his preferences. A customized list is immediately generated for him together with exact recommendations. The history of his purchases, preferences and responses to feedback questionnaires is accumulated in a database. This intellectual property may well be Amazon's main asset.

There is no technological obstacles to implementing this vision today - only administrative and legal (patent) ones. Big brick and mortar sell stores are not up to processing the flood of data staggering to result. They also remain extremely sceptical regarding the feasibility of the new medium. And privacy issues preclude data mining or the sufficient variety and usage of personal data (remember the case of Amazon's "Readers' Circles").

The virtual list is a incommunicable case of a new internet off-shoot: the "smart (shopping) agents". These are Ai applications with "long memories".

They draw detailed profiles of consumers and users and then suggest purchases and refer to the accepted sites, catalogues, or virtual malls.

They also supply price comparisons and the new generation cannot be blocked or fooled by using differing stock categories.

In the future, these agents will cover also brick and mortar sell chains and, in conjunction with wireless, location-specific services, issue a map of the field or store closest to an address specified by the user (the default being his residence), or yielded by his Gps enabled wireless movable or Pda. This technology can be seen in performance in a few music sites on the web and is likely to be dominant with wireless internet appliances. The owner of an internet enabled (third generation) movable phone is likely to be the target of geographically-specific marketing campaigns, ads and extra offers pertaining to his current location (as reported by his Gps - satellite Geographic Positioning System).

F. The transport of information - Internet News

Internet news are advantaged. They are often and dynamically updated (unlike static print news) and are all the time accessible (similar to print news), immediate and fresh.

The Future will explore a form of interactive news. A extra "corner" in the news Web site will adapt "breaking news" posted by members of the the group (or corporate press releases). This will supply readers with a espy into the development of the news, the raw material news are made of. The same technology will be applied to interactive Tvs. article will be downloaded from the internet and displayed as an overlay on the Tv screen or in a box in it. The contents downloaded will be directly linked to the Tv programming. Thus, the biography and track report of a football player will be displayed while a football match and the history of a country when it gets news coverage.

4. Terra Internetica - Internet, an Unknown Continent

Laymen and experts alike talk about "sites" and "advertising space". Yet, the Internet was never compared to a new continent whose exterior is infinite.

The Internet has its own real estate developers and building companies. The real life equivalents derive their profits from the scarcity of the resource that they exploit - the Internet counterparts derive their profits from the tenants (content producers and distributors, e-tailers, and others).

Entrepreneurs bought "Internet Space" (pages, domain names, portals) and leveraged their acquisition commercially by:

Renting space out; Constructing infrastructure on their property and selling it; Providing an arresting gateway, entry point (portal) to the rest of the internet; Selling advertising space which subsidizes the tenants (Yahoo!-Geocities, Tripod and others); Cybersquatting (purchasing exact domain names identical to brand names in the "real" world) and then selling the domain name to an interested party. Internet Space can be undoubtedly purchased or created. The speculation is low and getting lower with the introduction of competition in the field of domain registration services and the growth in the amount of top domains.

Then, infrastructure can be erected - for a shopping mall, for free home pages, for a portal, or for other purpose. It is undoubtedly this infrastructure that the developer can later sell, lease, franchise, or rent out.

But this real estate bubble was the culmination of a long and tortuous process.

At the beginning, only members of the fringes and the avant-garde (inventors, risk assuming entrepreneurs, gamblers) spend in a new invention. No one knows to say what are the optimal uses of the invention (in other words, what is its future). Many - mostly members of the scientific and company elites - argue that there is no real need for the invention and that it substitutes a new and untried way for old and tried modes of doing the same things (so why assume the risk of investing in the unknown and the untried?).

Moreover, these criticisms are ordinarily well-founded.

To start with, there is, indeed, no need for the new medium. A new medium invents itself - and the need for it. It also generates its own market to satisfy this newly found need.

Two prime examples of this self-recursive process are the personal computer and the ageement disc.

When the Pc was invented, its uses were thoroughly unclear. Its execution was lacking, its abilities limited, it was unbearably user unfriendly. It suffered from faulty design, was absent any user comfort and ease of use and required vital pro knowledge to operate. The worst part was that this knowledge was exclusive to the new invention (not portable). It reduced labour mobility and exiguous one's pro horizons. There were many gripes among workers assigned to tame the new beast. Managers regarded it at best as a nuisance.

The Pc was concept of, at the beginning, as a sophisticated gaming machine, an electronic baby-sitter. It included a keyboard, so it was concept of in terms of a glorified typewriter or spreadsheet. It was used in general as a word processor (and the outlay justified solely on these grounds). The spreadsheet was the first real Pc application and it demonstrated the advantages potential to this new engine (mainly flexibility and speed). Still, it was more of the same. A speedier sliding ruler. After all, said the unconvinced, what was the disagreement in the middle of this and a hand held calculator (some of them already had computing, memory and programming features)?

The Pc was recognized as a medium only 30 years after it was invented with the introduction of multimedia software. All this time, the computer continued to spin off markets and secondary markets, needs and pro specialties. The talk as all the time was centred on how to enhance on existing markets and solutions.

The Internet is the computer's first foremost application. Hitherto the computer was only quantitatively separate to other computing or gaming devices. Multimedia and the Internet have made it qualitatively superior, sui generis, unique.

Part of the qoute was that the Internet was invented, is maintained and is operated by computer professionals. For decades these Habitancy have been conditioned to think in Olympic terms: faster, stronger, higher - not in terms of the new, the unprecedented, or the non-existent. Engineers are trained to enhance - seldom to invent. With few exceptions, its creators stumbled across the Internet - it invented itself despite them.

Computer professionals (hardware and software experts alike) - are linear thinkers. The Internet is non linear and modular.

It is still the age of hackers. There is still a lot to be done in enhancing technological prowess and powers. But their control of the contents is waning and they are being slowly replaced by communicators, creative people, advertising executives, psychologists, speculation capitalists, and the totally unpredictable masses who flock to flaunt their home pages and graphomania.

These all are attuned to the user, his thinking needs and his information and entertainment preferences.

The ageement disc is a separate tale. It was intentionally invented to enhance upon an existing technology (basically, Edison's Gramophone). Market-wise, this was a major gamble. The correction was, at first, debatable (many said that the sound quality of the first generation of ageement discs was inferior to that of its contemporaneous report players). Consumers had to be convinced to turn both software and hardware and to dish out thousands of dollars just to listen to what the manufacturers claimed was more a undoubtedly reproduced sound. A best seminar was the longer life of the software (though when contrasted with the exiguous life expectancy of the consumer, some of the first sales pitches sounded undoubtedly morbid).

The computer suffered from unclear positioning. The ageement disc was very clear as to its main functions - but had a rough time convincing the consumers that it was needed.

Every medium is first controlled by the technical people. Gutenberg was a printer - not a publisher. Yet, he is the world's most preeminent publisher. The technical cadre is joined by dubious or small-scale entrepreneurs and, together, they design ventures with no clear vision, market-oriented thinking, or orderly plan of action. The legislator is also dumbfounded and does not grasp what is happening - thus, there is no legislation to regulate the use of the medium. explore the introductory confusion regarding copyrighted vs. Licenced software, e-books, and the copyrights of Rom embedded software. Abuse or under-utilization of resources grow. The sale of radio frequencies to the first cellular phone operators in the West - a situation which repeats itself in Eastern and Central Europe nowadays - is an example.

But then more complicated transactions - exactly as in real estate in "real life" - begin to emerge. The Internet is likely to converge with "real life". It is likely to be dominated by brick and mortar entities which are likely to import their company methods and management. As its eccentric past (the dot.com boom and the dot.bomb bust) recedes - a sustainable and profitable Future awaits it.

The Metaphors of the Net
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