community

Few e-commerce companies made any money selling goods, but the idea that they could was all that mattered. When actual e-commerce didn't work, the internet was rebranded yet again as an investment platform. The Web was to be the new portal through which the middle class could invest in the stock market. And which stocks were they to invest in? Internet stocks, of course! Like any good pyramid scheme, everyone was in on it. Or at least they thought they were.

News stories about online communities such as The Well, or even discussion groups for breast cancer survivors were soon overshadowed by those about daring young entrepreneurs launching multi-million-dollar IPOs (Initial Price Offerings of formerly private stock on public exchanges such as the NYSE or NASDAQ.) Internet journalism, written by option-holding employees of media conglomerates, 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 opportunity to topple the storytellers who had dominated our politics, economics, society and religion - in short our very reality - and to replace their stories with those of our own. It was a beautiful and exciting sentiment, but one as based in a particular narrative as any other. Revolutions simply replace one story with another. The capitalist narrative is replaced by that of the communist; the religious fundamentalist's replaced by the gnostic's. The means may be different, but the rewards are the same. So is the exclusivity of their distribution. That's why they're called revolutions - we're just going in a circle.

This is why it might be more useful to understand the proliferation of interactive media as an opportunity for renaissance: a moment when we have the ability to step out of the story altogether. Renaissances are historical instances of widespread recontextualisation. People in a variety of different arts, philosophies and sciences have the ability to reframe their reality. Renaissance literally means 'rebirth'. It is the rebirth of old ideas in a new context. A renaissance is a dimensional leap, when our perspective shifts so dramatically that our understanding of the oldest, most fundamental elements of existence changes. The stories we have been using no longer work.

Take a look back at what we think of as the original Renaissance; the one we were taught in school. What were the main leaps in perspective? One example is the use of perspective in painting. Artists developed the technique of the vanishing point and with it the ability to paint three-dimensional representations on two-dimensional surfaces. The character of this innovation is subtle but distinct. It is not a technique for working in three dimensions; it is not that artists moved from working on canvas to working with clay. Rather, perspective painting allows an artist to relate between dimensions: representing three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional plane.

Another example is calculus, another key renaissance invention. Calculus is a mathematical system that allows us to derive one dimension from another. It is a way of describing curves with the language of lines, and spheres with the language of curves. The leap from arithmetic to calculus was not just a leap in our ability to work with higher dimensional objects, but a leap in our ability to relate the objects of one dimension to the objects of another. It was a shift in perspective that allowed us to orient ourselves to mathematical objects from beyond the context of their own dimensionality.

The other main features of the Renaissance permitted similar shifts in perspective. Circumnavigation of the globe changed our relationship between the planet we live on and the maps we used to describe it. The maps still worked, they just described a globe instead of a plane. Anyone hoping to navigate a course had to be able to relate a two-dimensional map to the new reality of a three-dimensional planet.

Similarly, the invention of moveable type and the printing press changed the relationship of author and audience to text. The creation of a manuscript was no longer a one-pointed affair. The creation of the first manuscript still was, but now it could be replicated and distributed to everyone. It was still one story, but now was subject to a multiplicity of individual perspectives. This innovation alone changed the landscape of religion in the Western World. Individual interpretation of the Bible led to the collapse of Church authority and the unilateral nature of its decrees. Everyone demanded his or her own relationship to the story.

Our electronic renaissance

In all these cases, people experienced a very particular shift in their relationship to, and understanding of, dimensions. Understood this way, a renaissance is a moment of reframing. We step out of the frame as it is currently defined and see the whole picture in a new context. We can then play by new rules.

It is akin to the experience of a computer game player. At first, a gamer will play a video or computer game by the rules. He'll read the manual, if necessary, then move through the various levels of the game. Mastery of the game, at this stage, means getting to the end: making it to the last level, surviving, becoming the most powerful character or, in the case of a simulation game, designing and maintaining a thriving family, city or civilisation. For many gamers, this is as far as it goes.