I could be making my name on the internet right now. All I need is a bright idea and I can live the Great Internet Dream - that my startup website becomes the best in the field and millions will surf a path to my door. Kudos, fame, interviews in Time magazine, profiles in the FT... all around the corner, just as soon as I have a brilliant idea.
While awaiting inspiration, I had a look for other sites that have done the same. There are quite a few. Although the corporate giants such as Microsoft, the BBC, CNN and AOL Time Warner have a massive web presence, some of the smaller non-profit sites have the reputation that is infinitely more powerful on the net.
Best known is the Drudge Report, which reached international prominence when it broke the story of President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky. Matt Drudge started by relaying anonymous Hollywood gossip, and, as his reputation and contacts list grew, he moved into all types of news - his was the first US news source to publish the story of Princess Diana's death. It is unpleasant to read and often strident, but it does get the news out.
Many other sites have achieved success in the same way, although not to the same government-shaking extent. Ain't It Cool News is simply one person's website consisting mainly of film reviews not very well presented - but, like the Drudge Report, it has access. Its reputation has brought it prominence in a continual virtuous circle. The more people you reach, the more people contribute rumours, gossip, reviews or whatever to your site; as your site gets better content, its reputation grows and more people visit. Reputation is all: David Lisk of Northern Ireland has, for some reason, built an amateur list at www.airdisasters.co.uk of every civilian air crash in history. Such is its deserved popularity that after last week's Concorde crash in Paris it almost collapsed under the visitor load.
Oddly, although the internet started life as a network connecting research institutions, very little independent science information is available. Oddly, because science depends on the full and free exchange of information: the isolated scientist is rare beyond the shores of Doctor Moreau's Island or the grounds of Castle Frankenstein. But publication in a peer-reviewed journal is the scientific mark of quality, and publishing on the internet rather than in the scientific mainstream is viewed as unnatural, the province of fringe scientists, charlatans and flat-earthers (see the Flat Earth Society at www.flat-earth.org ; but possibly they are not entirely serious).
Non-specialist independent sites do exist, generally run in the authors' spare time. One exmple is How Stuff Works, whose author was forced by sheer pressure of readership to transform it into a commercial company. ScienceNet, a charity devoted to answering science questions from the public - it has a telephone equivalent, Science Line - and aPieceOfUs www.apieceofus.org.uk are still non-commercial, probably thanks to large pools of volunteer authors.
The contrast between scientists and technologists couldn't be greater. The net was created mainly for scientists, but largely by first-generation computer hackers. The first bulletin board services (a means of posting messages and replies for a selected readership) were set up by programmers for programmers. They exchanged technical hints, clever shortcuts, jokes that only a hacker could find funny and the first Frequently Asked Questions lists.
Everyone profits from a well-maintained FAQ list; and, more often than not, programmers, like any other profession - doctors, lawyers, politicians, soldiers, even journalists - feel more in common with their competing opposite numbers than with their distant employers. Thus there are whole libraries of shareware and freeware: programs that are open for anyone to use (try www.freewarefiles.com). There are many websites that exist solely to provide tips on constructing websites, such as Webmonkey, and, of course, numberless FAQ sites on everything from the care and feeding of your pet African clawed frogs to building your own telescope.
Every hobby, however obscure, has a home somewhere in cyberspace: the Eddie Stobart lorry spotters' club is at www.lorryspotting.com - and compared with some of the other hobby sites out there, lorry spotting is mainstream.
Although it makes no commercial sense, the co-operative culture of the internet has survived the explosive dotcommercialisation of the 1990s - better, in fact, as some veteran Net users remark, than many of the dotcoms themselves. Will it last? It is still growing as the internet grows, and showing few signs of dying out. New co-operative projects are announced all the time, and attract thousands of volunteers. So perhaps it will survive after all.
