By
Ray Barrington
Dotcom Editor
IFor those
of you who don't read this magazine from back to front, the
Cyberpunk is leaving.
Dusty Kraft, who has written the column since the first Dot
Com (that makes him our longest-tenured writer, even more
than me) is heading off to new adventures.
Granted, that may please a few folks who never really understood
what the Cyberpunk was up to. We did, and enjoyed his writing
and his humor.
But it seems appropriate, too, that he's heading out. The
Internet he wrote about is far from what it was when he -
and we - started. We're seeing the fallout. The big tent of
the Internet, it seems, was not infinitely expandable, and
it eventually had to snap back. Or, to put it another way,
check the dead bookmarks/favorites on your old puter sometime.
There have been plenty of business models for the Internet,
which at first, you may recall, was never supposed to be business-oriented.
There was "push" technology, which got pushed away. There
were all sorts of e-commerce ideas. It turns out most of us
either didn't feel secure buying over the Internet or just
wanted to see and touch the merchandise.
Now, sites that had offered content for free are charging
for it; Brittanica.com is doing just that.
And, lest we forget, Napster, that brief, shining moment when
the music was free and all-you-can-eat. It was the Internet
generation's online Woodstock.
There's still a Napster, but it's a totally different animal.
And, although he may be doing something else, there will always
be a Cyberpunk..
Ray Barrington is the editor of Dot Com magazine. Send
correspondence, helpful hints and advice for the unwired to
[email protected].
|
