“Government and local authorities are wrong to think that improved access to the web for those who cannot afford to surf from home will end social exclusion, said Professor Steve Woolgar, a sociologist from Brunel University and director of the Virtual Society research project.

Preliminary results from the Virtual Society studies show that internet-connected kiosks put in libraries and shopping centres to get net novices using the web were being used more by those already online.”

“Kiosks and public net access points only attract a broader range of people when novices are given help and training during their first few forays online. ”

“There is something, I think, about the Internet — with its microtargeted discussion groups and virtual celebrities who are famous to 15 people — that ramps up the possibilities of personal hype. The padded résumé is probably as old as the résumé itself, but with one’s own Web site, it is easy to showcase not just your padded resume but also complimentary blurbs from friends and colleagues, thoughtful sound bites, photographs of you with friends, etc. These little self-marketing monuments exist now by the
thousands. Two years ago, it was rare for a serious author to have such a site, but now even New Yorker writers have them, successfully creating viral marketing campaigns that were not possible in, say, J.D. Salinger’s time. Of course, the strategy isn’t limited to published authors. I recently stumbled across a Web site that advised chat-room denizens on how to establish their personal on-screen brand. For starters: “Develop a catch phrase.”

It is all part of the “Brand Called You,” a sort of life-as-company philosophy articulated by the management guru Tom Peters — and long since swallowed whole by the career-advice wing of the business press.”

“Canadian scientists have implanted spider genes in a herd of goats, resulting in the production of silky strands in goat milk that can be used for sutures and other applications.”

“Both the U.S. and Canadian military have expressed interest in using it for making anti-ballistic defense systems, he said.”

“Both the beauty and danger of Gnutella are that it is a more sophisticated version of Napster, the infamous and popular program that college students have been using to swap music files over the Web. Napster’s developers have recently been hit with a flurry of copyright-infringement lawsuits. But unlike users of Napster, Gnutella aficionados can trade files without going through a storage center, making it impossible to shut down the system without unplugging every computer on the network and difficult to control by laws because there’s no central authority.”

“Marc Andreessen, a co-founder of Netscape Communications and a former chief technology officer for AOL, compares Gnutella to a benevolent virus, a “revolutionary” program that spreads the power of publishing from an elite set of corporations to anyone who has a computer.”

“Napster’s huge underground success has unleashed the maverick concept of creating a shared online library of free songs.

Now, a new program called Scour Exchange takes the Napster concept and extends it to photos, videos and feature-length films.”