ates, moved from the culture section to the business pages
and the dot.com pyramid scheme became the dominant new media story.

A medium born out of the ability to break through packaged stories was
now being used to promote a new, equally dangerous one: the great
pyramid. A smart kid writes a business plan. He finds a few 'angel'
investors to back him up long enough to land some first-level
investors. Below them on the pyramid are several more rounds of
investors, until the investment bank gets involved. Another few levels
of investors buy in until the decision is made to go public. Of
course, by this point, the angels and other early investors are
executing their exit strategy. It used be known as a carpet bag. In
any case they're gone and the investing public is left holding the
soon-to-be-worthless shares.

Tragically, but perhaps luckily, the dot.com bubble burst along with
the story being used to keep it inflated. The entire cycle, the birth
of a new medium, the battle to control it and the downfall of the
first victorious camp, taught us a lot about the relationship of
stories to the technologies through which they are disseminated. And
the whole ordeal may have given us an opportunity for renaissance.

Back here in the real world, the internet is doing just fine. Better
than ever. The World Wide Web, whose rather opaque platform ascended
primarily for its ability to serve as an online catalogue, has been
adapted to serve many of the internet's original, more technologically
primitive functions. USENET discussions have been reborn as web-based
bulletin boards such as Slashdot, and Metafilter. Personal daily
diaries known as weblogs have multiplied by the thousands. Blogger.com
provides a set of publishing tools that allows even a novice to create
a weblog, automatically add content to a Web site or organise links,
commentary and open discussions. In the short time Blogger has been
available, it has fostered an interconnected community of tens of
thousands of users. These people don't simply surf the Web. They are
now empowered to create it.

Rising from the graveyard of failed business plans, these
collaborative communities of authors and creators are the true
harbingers of cultural and perhaps political renaissance.

Chapter 3

The opportunity for renaissance

The birth of the internet was interpreted by many as a revolution.
Those of us in the counterculture saw in the internet an