1 Experience preferred

Loud music, fried sausages and chips, Lara Croft’s tits and an £8,000 pay cut.

2 Quiiiickk! Find a tape – I’m on TV!

From overnight media darling to obsolete sham.

PART TWO – Reactionaries and Visionaries

3 Luddites, information overload and technophobia

Overcome your dependence on omnipresent machines and stop worshipping the demi-gods of speed and convenience.

4 Cyberculturalists

RU Sirius – Prankster and veteran San Franciscan cyberpunk explains the importance of guerrilla tactics on the Net.

Howard Rheingold – Renowned member of the “Digerati”, who extols the advantages of virtual communities, yet warns these could fracture traditional society and lead to another World War.

Robert Anton Wilson – science fiction and conspiracy author, futurist, standup comic, punk singer, ex-editor at Playboy and philosopher who engages in “Operation Mind Fuck” and is strict about semantic hygiene.

5 Futurists

Peter Cochrane – Digital visionary who “lives 10 years in the future”, thinks we should insert silicon chips to enhance our “wetware” [brain] and update our skills to stay employable. “I no longer worry about dying, but I do worry about dying before my computer is proud of me.” [Update: was awarded an OBE in 1999 for his contribution to international communications, after this article was done.]

Max More – Extropian who manages a networking organisation that strives to “extend life, fine-tune psychology, move off-planet and develop artificial intelligence.” A signed-up member for cryonics.

6 Instant millionaires (UK)

Five interviewees – WWW genius Tim Berners-Lee, Demon’s Clifford Stanford [who went on to make 300m pounds, lose some of that, and got a suspended 6-mth jail sentence for reading another person's emails],  Firefox president John Kimberley, Grahame Davies of Easynet and Peter Dawe of Pipex.

PART THREE – Love, lust and loathing

7 Dating

A guide to online seduction with a touch of romance inspired by a Judith Krantz mini-series.

8 IRC love [Internet Relay Chat]

Love goes wrong for a young single bloke.

9 Adultery

Confessions of Internet widows, and a Southern Belle ex-beauty queen contestant writes a lusty story of online love.

10 Cybergrrls

Cybersex expert Lisa Palac explains how to give an online blow job.

Bodyshop founder Anita Roddick [died 2007] struggles to overcome technophobia.

Feminist Dale Spender says women worry about becoming impersonal robotic tech-heads with “nothing but alt.binaries.sex for personal gratification”.

11 X-rated: Adults only

Meet the British men who create rude sites (girl-next-door types wearing M&S knickers are most popular); a search for women’s erotica (beware the “angle of the dangle”) and a guide to online masturbation.

12 Pedophiles online

Hackers declare war against pedophiles, who fight back and claim they have the right to “freedom of sexual expression”.  With your kids. And then discard them when they’re too old.

PART FOUR – Bad influences and wicked behaviour

13 Bizarre emails

Unsolicited messages from around the world.

14 Crime

How to get away with the perfect murder, make thermonuclear bombs in your kitchen and sell drugs to schoolchildren.

15 Hate sites

Everyone hates in different ways, but they all claim they’re related to Jesus, can only breed with people who share the same beliefs, and the Government has it in for them.

16 Satanist harassed by online stalker

A prominent Satanist is harassed by an anonymous stalker and noone wants to help him.

17 Revenge of the hackers

What if you’re individually attacked by a hacker? How much damage can they do? Three victims share their experiences.

The only qualifications demanded at my job interview were the ability to last through Future Publishing’s marathonic all-night Summer and Christmas parties, and to survive an £8,000 pay cut. Also, there is a strong work ethos: you have to like loud music, drinking, wearing grungy clothes and eating fried sausages and chips for lunch. The atmosphere is like an informal university, with everyone wearing campus clothes. I’m 30-plus, and feel ancient among the slim, midriff-topped gingham-clad twenty-something girls. They despondently eye up computer geeks who’ve only ever lost their virginity to Virtual Valerie. The blokes see no further than Lara Croft’s wobble-free triangular tits and are addicted to Quake and ring 24-hr hotlines and print out walkthroughs if they get stuck on a level. The only movie they’d ever ask you out to would be the re-released director’s cut of a sci-fi movie that features an extra three seconds of scenery. They all read the FT – which I’d mistakenly thought was an abbreviation for the Financial Times – but is actually the Fortean Times, a mag dedicated to crazy conspiracy theories and alien abductions. The guys are also into mountain biking, but don’t like cycling with girls, because they “stop every five minutes to hold a picnic and look at the flowers”.

Future’s the biggest employer in Bath. The pay’s shit, but everyone gets a twice-yearly profit share bonus. Just after I joined, a larger company bought out Future and we stopped getting Christmas hampers, started having to produce 13 issues every year and had to sign for everything we took from the stationery cupboard. It didn’t really make much difference, though, because the ear-lip-nose-bellybutton-pierced clerk was too busy turning septic to notice how much we staggered out with.

To keep in touch with the employees, management runs a “Virtual Forum” via anonymous email, so we can say whatever we want to the Big Boss. It’s usually filled with personal animus about the annual awards for Best Editor/Story/Ad Rep of the Year.

There are seven full-time staff at .net, but only two of us are writers. We’re supposed to write 19 pages a month – one page per day 0f 750 wds, 3500 words a week.

I [used to have] a Web site at Futurenet.com. It’s part of a massive site with more than 2,000,000 readers weekly. My page has a glamour shot of me sitting in a bubblebath while reading a job hunting book and using my mobile phone. The story was about finding employment via the Internet. The photos were taken by a Greek bloke who’d been raised in Denmark. I used car shampoo to generate enough industrial-strength froth, as conventional bubbles quickly burst under the hot lighting, and I emerged feeling like I’d been caught in an oil slick.

[from the webpage]

Hi! How are you? Me? I’m sparkling thank you. That is, when I’m not cavorting in a bubblebath for photo-shoots. Which, of course, is one of my favourite pasttimes! Hasselblads, Nikons, Konicas – hell, I’ll even pose for Instamatics. Oh, what I’d give to have skyscraper cheekbones and rollercoaster curves! Truly I’m an Anna-Nicole Smith trapped in the body of Emma Thompson and topped off with Winon Ryder’s bra measurement.

What’s your background – humble or haute?

I began my adventurous life with a glorious head of  curls and a beaming, friendly personality. “I don’t know what went wrong,” my dearest Mum, an ex-scripture teacher/door-to-door Avon lady/librarian/computer graduate/high-school teacher said recently, cursed with a dour, snarling spinster she couldn’t foist off on the RSPCA. Incidentally, I have two other sisters and two brothers, who’ve turned out to be upstanding paragons of good citizenship and decency.

Please share your philosophical outlook on life with us.

The  epigram which has majorly influenced me is “Take your passion – and make it happen” (Flashdance 1983). The incessant drumbeat helped solder it into my brain. Nothing much has happened, though.

Tell us about your hobbies.

I have a wide spectrum of musical tastes, mostly ’70s kitsch and indy and a bit of kd Lang and Deborah Conway. Gigs I’ve been to include Iggy Pop, Buzzcocks, The Sweet, Ramones, Butthole Surfers, Guns ’n’ Roses, Skid Row, ABBA, John Denver, Richard Clayderman, TISM and Billy Bragg. Groupie-wise, I managed to gatecrash my way towards Axl Rose’s bedroom (stopped by six henchmen outside the door, but, hey, I got Slash’s autograph!) and Bjorn Again’s backstage party.

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Within the next week I’d scored a rating on Robert Toup’s famous Babes on the Web site. This sent my page hits soaring. I also received dozens of complimentary emails, too, which were all shared an identical theme:

Nice photo. Are you single?

Mark

I’m 40, 5-8, and 160.  How about you?

Jack

Hey, I’ve got a Nikon and I’m always looking for subjects!

Dave

The award for attracting the most Over-The-Top gushing, though, has to go to one of .net’s freelance writers, whose prose inspired an admiring fan, who eked out a living at McDonald’s, to send him £15 *cash* (probably his whole week’s wages) so he could buy some beers.

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On Mondays the .net team often goes to the nearby Jazz Café for breakfast.

I only live 10 minutes away from the office, so by the time I stumble in, the sleep creases haven’t had time to fade. Every five weeks we have to move into a new office because the computer division is constantly launching and closing mags. This means we throw out cratefuls of unsolicited boxes of techie books, like Visual Basic 5.0 Programmer’s Guide to WIN32 API. I tried ringing and writing to the distributor to stop the onslaught, but 14 cases of manuals still arrive monthly. They’re out of date by the time they arrive, and we donate them to our local university.

During the last move, I was off sick, so someone else packed all of my stuff, and most of it went missing so I had to reorder my chair, footstool, speakers and copyholder. Whenever we shift, it takes a week to get the phones hooked up and two weeks for our Internet connection to work. We introduce ourselves to the new security guards – they’re all doddery blokes who couldn’t spot five people hauling out a load of Pentiums, much less stop them.

The office we’re currently in overlooks tables outside the Garrick’s Head pub, a gay bar where the “Fruit of the Week” is usually one of the waiters. It’s an ideal location during summer because we’re on the second floor and can anonymously throw water out at unsuspecting colleagues.

Otherwise, we stay at our workstations while one team member plays The Smiths and Radiohead loudly and I keep asking him to turn it down. He buys the latest CDs as soon as they’re released, so we end up listening to a lot of duds.

When we lunch, we go to the Trinity hotel and usually bump into a crowd of Future jukebox trivia addicts who end up £5 in front after a one-hour sesh. They always get knocked out during the £1000 jackpot, though, when you have to get all three questions right.

The best prank I ever played was when I wrote a story about how to forge emails, and sent one to a colleague from “Geri” of the Spice Girls:

Subject: your mag

From: Geri Spice

Hi! We’ve just got on to the internet and we want to say how much we *LURVE* reading .net. It’s really, really useful for finding our way around. We’ve found lots of groovy Web pages dedicated to us, too! Keep up the great work!

Girl power!

lots of LURVE,

Geri, Emma, Victoria, Mel B, Mel C.

I told everyone else and we cakked ourselves stupid all day.

Apart from lame pranks, we’ve had a few shady activities, too. Our incredibly successful international sales rep was arrested on suspicion of money-laundering! He’d quadrupled the sales of overseas licensees. Unfortunately, Customs officers at New York’s JFK Airport found $130,000 in cash strapped to his body. They raided his modest London flat and found £60,000 worth of cocaine.

A minor scandal on the domestic homefront involved a reporter who’d been giving competition prizes away to friends or keeping them for himself. He was given five minutes to clear his desk, frogmarched out and the door code was changed the next day. The security guards stuck up “Wanted” posters so they would recognise him and keep him out of the building. Pilfering prizes was a common practice, and a lot of goodies were returned to our locked storage cabinet during the next couple of paranoia-ridden weeks.

A great idea: one of our games mags had a top PC to give away and readers had to send in the most delicious choccies for a chance to win. They were swamped with every type of erotic, liqueur and handmade chocs and had so many they begged everyone to visit and help devour them.

When not indulging in freebies, I try to get some work done while coping with one of the vile aspects – talking to embittered ex-journalists who now have well-paid PR jobs, and resent having to beg for media coverage.

BRIIINNG! I sent you a press release and I’d like to know what you think of it? Can I ring you back when you’ve read it? Can you ring me and tell me if it’s in the issue? I need it; I do the clippings.

BRIIINNG! Hi. I just want to know if you got our press release. About Virtual City. It’s an online community. Can you use it? When will that be? We’d like to invite you to London so we can show you the site. I’ll ring back and check in a few weeks.

Completely pointless, since I review about 120 sites a month, and could never keep track of all of them. The corporate PR breed usually do everything to be accommodating and genial, but music company PRs are from an entirely different lineage. They’re always stoned and barely manage to return calls three weeks later. Once I was organising an interview with a one-hit wonder band that hadn’t had a hit in two years, and was liaising with their ditsy personal assistant.

“What’s the name of your magazine again? Dot dot?,” she cluelessly inquired.

“No, dot net,” I replied.

“I told the guys dot dot. Our Web site’s on a server called – a gigabop? I’m not sure – what is it?”

“A gigabyte?,” I suggested.

“No, I know enough about the Internet to know it’s not that. You should know these things, working for an Internet magazine. It’s a great server with hundreds of sites. We’re also doing work with Bepabops and Flippyflights.”

“I don’t know those bands,” I conceded.

“They’re not bands – they’re technical terms,” she claimed. “If you don’t know what I’m talking about and are going to be that superficial, I’ve got to go and do other things.”

She hung up.

The best PR spinoffs involve going to London to attend lavish corporate PR launches for Web sites. At the Virgin Net launch I interviewed Richard Branson after he jumped from a forklift and got caught in a “Web” while wearing a silver “cybersuit”. At these types of functions the journalists are fed by joining an enormous queue for a buffet that always features smoked salmon with a sprig of dill as an entree. I usually slip outside and find a deli where I can get a microwaved hot curry. This means that after lunch my nose never stops running during question time.

In contrast, the arty farty Web site launches always feature `smart drinks’ with L phenylalanine and melanonin and walls decorated with computer-generated fractal posters. In this instance, the PR people always look askance at their clients, who are reminiscent of those dreamers who walk around in a daze looking for Pink Floyd memorabilia at record fairs. Multimedia artists inevitably harbour visions of turning aimless community groups into Europe’s leading online centres, which they grandly nickname “Silicon Alleys”. After the official spiel, they know how to party and kick off by serving “Virtual Reality” cocktails, concocted mainly of green and blue liquids, and featuring generous measures of Smirnoff, Absolut vodka, curacao and melon liqueur.

Occasionally I get an invitation to something interesting, such as when La Plante Productions rang to say they were writing a four-hour “whodunnit drama” for Channel 4, entitled Killer Net, to be filmed in two weeks’ time. The researcher wanted to know if they could use the dialogue: “According to .net magazine, 70 per cent of the Internet is used for pornography. I’m just seeing what the fuss is about.” I tell her the figure we’ve published is 90 per cent. “We’d also like to use a copy of .net as a background object lying on the desk in the main character’s bedroom,” she says. Great! Maybe we’ll see a shot of the mag during a steamy sex scene with a serial killer! I sent off trillions of copies and enclosed a request to turn up on the set to do a story about the filming, which arrived a couple of months later.

I spend half of every month collating all the material about the latest Web sites, which usually adds up to about 20,000 words. [This was before Google!] Then I spend two days choosing the best 120. My favourite one was a police Web site asking for sightings of a super-snitch Mafia crim, Gravano, who put 37 gangsters behind bars, but only ended up doing five years in the pen for 19 murders. US Combined Police County president John Flood told me he didn’t think Gravano has been punished enough. “I’d like to meet him on Las Vegas Strip – he could have his .357 Magnum and I’d have my weapon. In about five mintues, Gravano would be history.”

It’s fantastic being paid to find out all about weird, extreme sites.   I find the anonymity of the Net means I venture into areas I’d never dream of investigating in person. Hacking, shooting, fraud, racial supremacists, harsh prison life, and other macho endeavours. I’ve interviewed a Satanist, jailed hacker, paedophile, jilted wife struggling to bring up two young kids, couples who’d met online, married and had babies, philosophers, pranksters, futurists, Luddites, porn purveyors, and online guerillas. I used to glibly think most people were a boringly homogenous silent majority, but now I realise many actually believe and live by unusual philosophies. It’s a much cheaper experience than incurring the cost of travelling to foreign countries, and has a similar cultural mind-blowing effect.

+ “Hi. I’m a researcher for the BBC’s Tomorrow’s World, and I’d like to know if you have any contacts for people who’ve got married in cyberspace.” Yes, here they are. “Also, I’d like to know whether it’s OK to get married in cyberspace – like, is it legal?” Yes. “But how – they’re not at a registry office – they’re in cyberspace. What country is that?” It’s just like television space, I tell her, speaking slowly. Though the ceremony is broadcast via the Net and the participants may be in different countries, they are still present in a physical location, and the local laws apply.

+ My desk is covered in yellow sticky notes asking for information about the 39 Web designers in San Diego who suicided to join an alien spaceship that’s trailing behind the Hale-Bopp comet. ITV, the BBC, Channel 4 and local TV stations want me to ring back. “Do you know of any cults who find new recruits via the Internet?” all the reporters ask. Yes – racial supremacists, the Church of Scientology, the Tory Party. They aren’t happy with this response. “Have any suicided?” Not that I know of. I mention the story about the woman who travelled 500 miles to be killed by a weirdo she’d been corresponding with via email for months and they’d both been fantasising about S&M and murder. The researchers aren’t interested, and I tell them to ring the Fortean Times for cult information. None of them has ever heard of the FT.

+ Someone from BBC Bristol radio rings and wants me to provide statistics about how many British people use the Net.

+ The BBC Today program wants me and another Internet magazine editor to discuss American cultural imperialism on the Net. I said I thought it was a prevalent problem, and the other editor agreed. We turned up the next morning at the studio and, having considered our stances overnight, changed our opinions completely. I said I didn’t think the British were put off, because there are many cable TV subscribers who pay to watch US programs. The reporter wasn’t happy and insisted we stick to our earlier stance. “Are you trying to tell us what to say?” I asked. “No – I just want you to repeat what you said yesterday,” he replied. We didn’t. But I learnt a lesson – tell the media exactly whose side you’re on and stick to it.

+ Danny from the News (“Screws”) of the World phoned. Could I please put him in touch with padeophiles selling porn over the Net? “I need to find someone by the end of this week,” he said. I was amazed he thought I knew these people personally. He didn’t even have Net access, so he couldn’t research the subject. “We’ll give you up to £150 for a good tip off,” he said, leaving his phone number. Two weeks later, I was reading The Screws and there was a story about an English bloke based in Amsterdam who’s advertising porn vids starring 12-year-old actresses over the Net. It’s all legal in Amsterdam, but British pervs are jerking off to them.

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New Web Site Teaches *Anyone* How to Become a Celebrity

Madonna, Brad Pitt and Sharon Stone aren’t the only people who can get celebrity status. “Lots of famous people have become famous simply because they know how to use the media,” says Paul Hartunian. Visitors to the NETrageous Publicity Resource Center Web site  will learn:

* the four steps to get publicity.

* how people have spent as little as 15 cents and made a big media splash, almost overnight!

* three big traps people seeking publicity can fall into — and how to avoid each of them.

Please send $$$$ to:

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+ Our PR women have been trying to develop a relationship with a TV production company  for ages and they want me to try to score a weekly five-minute slot on the Computer Channel, a two-hour daily cable TV show. I have to appear on the show next Friday.

+ An Internet Enthusiasts’ Club invited me to debate the question of censorship on the Net. The other two speakers include a Freedom of Speecher and a bigwig who’s in charge of a large group of Internet Service Providers. Only two days before I’m due to attend, I get a phone call from the ISP bigwig’s PR officer, who warns me her boss isn’t attending because he suspects we’ll be ambushed. “Did you know the enthusiasts are linked to an anti-censorship campaign Web site?” she asks. “I don’t think it would be wise for him to go along. Or you, either.” She says she’ll ring back to tell me if he’s attending, but she doesn’t. I take along a beefy 6ft male friend and am prepared to be lynched. I’m shit scared, but it’s a break from being behind a desk all day. I’m also curious to know how some of our readers truly feel about my pro-censorship stance. Maybe they’ll sway me with some startling new facts. I’d already received several emails criticising my branding of anti-censorship campaigners as going around in circles over poncey citizens’ rights meant I was “flippant and irresponsible, if not overtly dangerous”.

They were charging a £3 entrance fee, though I wasn’t paid, and only 13 people turned up. An elderly woman slept in the corner. We had spotlights shining on us and the audience was in darkness. The other bloke gave his speech first, and he was confident and had conviction. I was very jealous. I did OK, got a few laughs and was asked 90 per cent of the questions. I said I was fed up with people rambling on about “what’s the definition of pornography” and never reaching a solution. Yet when I see kiddie porn pics all these freedom questions go out the window for me, and I just want it stopped as soon as possible. I’d begun by saying my thoughts were full of contradictions and I didn’t have any solutions, and they kindly pointed out all the inconsistencies. “I’m a journalist, not a politician, and I don’t need to have a cohesive policy,” I said. They were all friendly, though afterwards I didn’t stay for drinks. Beneath the chumminess, we were still on opposite sides of the fence.

+It’s Wednesday morning and a researcher from The Time, The Place rings to ask if I could be one of their experts in a debate about “Internet porn: harmful or harmless?” They want me to be at the ITN London studio on Friday by 8.45am. “Our audience is mostly female, from the lower socio-economic class who are watching telly while they’re doing the ironing. The sort who don’t own computers, so we don’t want too much jargon,” she requests. The program was discussing a case in Wales where a 34-year-old Dad was addicted to downloading porn pics from the Net and he and his wife, 32, had abused their five children. He was sentenced to life for grievous bodily harm, indecent assualt, rape and child cruelty and the Mum was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment. The judge said the house was completely squalid except for a comfy computer chair and the pristine sophisticated equipment.

The next morning I got up at 5.15am and travelled in from Bath on the train. The idea of taking part in a live debate is nerve-wracking, but .net takes the stance that Internet pornography should be censored according to the same criteria as other media, so I know the housewives watching at home will probably be on my side.

I arrive early and am ushered through to the Green Room where two anti-porn activists are stalking around, pumping up their adrenaline and spraying machine-gun patter about “filth”. One, who used to work in the sex industry, asked me whose “side” I was on, as she liked to identify her opponents. Both had been on the show before and had extensive media experience.

There were about 10 invited guests, and we could help ourselves to the plastic-wrapped sandwiches with combinations of cottage cheese and pineapple and mashed egg and fruit chutney. There was tea and coffee, but no alcohol. A 50-ish overly made-up makeup lady kept whisking guests away. She splashed dark liquid eyeliner over me and heaps of blush with a huge brush and tons of powder. Then she added lash-fattening mascara and deep red lippie. John Stapleton, the host, asked me lots of questions and said he had no idea how to use the Net. Dunno if that was just a stance or not.

He was extremely genial and said the show was commissioned to run until December 1998, and the main opposition, Kilroy, had recently been strategically rescheduled from 9.30am to 9.45am so they’d overlap. Suddenly he was called out to “sort out a legal problem”.

We were handed forms to sign which granted “the rights to use any part of any recordings for television broadcast and re-broadcast  in all media worldwide in perpetuity”. The flip side of the form urged us to “please get involved and remember to shout up with your comments”. The producer warned me that Stapleton may not remember to ask me a question, so I had to put up my hand.

Then a researcher gave me a pre-interview dry run with a couple of general questions. The most vocal anti-porn campaigners and pro-porn advocates were seated opposite each other along the two aisles. My name was written on masking tape stuck to the floor next to my seat. “We’ll have a lot of viewers, we’re only competing against The Style Challenge today,” Stapleton reassured us. He then asked audience members to explain what they thought about porn and if they had any experiences to share. One of the women said it was outrageous that erect penises couldn’t be used in porn mags. Stapleton paused, listening to a tiny device in his ear, then said: “I just got a message from the director upstairs – this show goes out at 10am and there could be fathers and their sons watching this program and we don’t want to use strong language.” The audience groaned, as this seemed an impossible request in a debate about porn. “We’re all adults and we know what we’re referring to,” Stapleton said. “Can we use the word masturbation?” a bloke asked. “Yes, masturbation would be OK, but try to think of another around it,” he unhelpfully suggested. There were many vehement lobbyists and Stapleton flapped his jacket coat open repeatedly, saying: “It’s going to be a hot debate today.” A woman seated about 10 feet away from the rest of us, with her back to the camera because of a “legal problem”. She later revealed her formerly wonderful Prince Charming boyfriend had a hidden stash of porn mags and had stuck a picture of one of her close relatives on the body of these porn models. She dumped him immediately.

The show began, and our host nimbly ran, stroked his chin thoughtfully, adjusted his tie, sat down and did a couple of deft dramatic turns along the stairs. The spiciest guests were two porn actresses and a couple of porn mag editors. They said they’d had wonderful experiences in the industry, made tons of money, were never abused, and had only simulated sex acts. The anti-porn campaigners began yelling and screaming, drowning out everyone. “Teen mags promote strumpet power.” “They teach girls how to be prostitutes.” “The Position of the Month is pornographic.” “Girls, girls… WOMEN!,” Stapleton shouted. “Only one at a time. I’m talking now and I’m in charge.”

There was a mid-way break with several ads for fish fingers and cleaning detergeants. Then Stapleton chatted to a 45-year-old ex-stripper who said the demand for hard-core porn had increased. Mid-sentence, he abruptly changed his tack, marched down the steps and sat next to me. I managed to make the audience gasp with my gee-whiz statistic of finding 700,000 porn sites within a second. Stapleton fed off the audience and theatrically repeated: “700,000!” He acted surprised, though I’d mentioned it to him previously in the Green Room. I also described pornographers can easily rename their sites after storybook characters, so they would evade censorship software and encourage children to discover these accidentally. My segment lasted 1 minute and 45 seconds. Not too bad. Another bloke then attacked me for explaining how easy it was to find porn on the Internet and the rest of the show degenerated into a free-for-all yelling match. The ex-porn queens were cheered when they accused the anti-porn crusaders of having non-existent sex lives. Stapleton put his fingers in his mouth to make a ear-piercing whistle in an attempt to regain the audience’s attention, and, although I put up my hand to make comments, only the shrieking campaigners got a word in.

In the aftermath, the guests assembled in the Green Room for about 10 minutes. I was cornered by the anti-porn campaigners, who pumped me for technical information. “In a perfect world, what if 100 per cent of peple wanted porn stopped on the Internet? Would this be possible?” they asked. “Not if one person was still producing it,” I answered. “It’s like monitoring every phone call in the world simultaneously and forever. Noone has the resources or the motivation.”

One of the ex-porn actresses asked Stapleton where she should send her invoice. I hadn’t been paid for appearing! My travelling expenses reimbursed, and we were offered a colour autographed photo of Stapleton, and quickly ushered outside to waiting taxis. Overall, I wondered what viewers gleaned from the program. Probably the thought that, yes, fish fingers would be a good idea for tea tonight.

My colleagues generously thought my TV appearance went well, though they said my trousers made my hips look huge and I looked better with makeup plastered on. My segment was placed on our mag CD, titled “Cotton on the telly”. We got a pointed email from a reader:

Subject: Cotton on the telly

From: Concerned reader

WIG!

B. Johnston

I immediately decided to grow out my platinum blonde bleached hair and get it streaked to look “natural.”

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+ I’m finally going to the Computer Channel. The producer, Helen, promised me lunch. Everyone at work’s jealous. I’ve seen a video of the show. The guests are mainly male and rotund. I have to talk about privacy issues and then join in a three-person debate about how the Net could promote online democracy.

+ Had some notes typed up, but didn’t really use them. Arrived at the Computer Channel Studio and Helen grilled me about several topics and what I was going to say. “You’re talking about privacy and taking part in a political debate,” she reminded me.

Thomas is a First Millennium advocate who believes we should be thinking long-term about colonising other planets. Helen asks whether his group had built an ocean platform to launch the first space ship. “No, we can’t afford it. The whole of society needs to be develop more wealth first, so we can spend it on research,” he says in a heavy Swedish accent.

A slim, blonde lady carefully pressed makeup over my face and pencilled in eyebrows – but my hair looked like an exploded pillow! The floor manager called us to go down to the studio within five minutes, and the two other male guests hadn’t been made up yet. “Don’t bother about them, do my hair!” I screamed. Fiona grabbed a huge rollerbrush and smoothed all the loose ends. Meantime, W, the presenter, was changing his trousers and kept teasing us: “Don’t look, don’t look,” hoping we’d sneak a glance. We didn’t.

My privacy interview was scheduled first, and W said: “You’re much more beautiful than our ugly director, you know.” “Thanks – I’m sure she can hear you,” I replied, and I could hear chuckles from the upstairs control room. W then spent the rest of the time conversing with the director via an earpiece, so it seemed like he was talking to thin air. “I felt dreadful,” he says. Pause. “A bit rough, I think.” Longer pause. “No, it’s best not to get into that sort of situation.” I wondered what they were discussing. Then he abruptly gave me a last-minute tip: “Be animated or concerned, but don’t act.” The four-minute privacy section went smoothly.

The debate was a little confused. Andy had his model of a “virtual parliament” he’d designed, but it wasn’t working interactively and as soon as the interview began he affected a bizarre “authoritative tone”, permanently lowered his left eyebrow and looked like Timothy Dalton doing James Bond. Thomas lost it completely and W pounced on his general left-wing comments. Unfortunately he didn’t mention aliens, which would have turned up the heat. I got tongue tied and advocated online voting. “Surely we don’t have time to go through all the legislative detail that needs to be read?” W challenged. “We’ll get bureaucrats to handle mundane decisions,” I retorted, hopelessly backing off quickly.

I wondered whether I’d impressed the producer enough to get that weekly slot our PR department was angling for.

+ I got a call from the Computer Channel. They want me to do a regular weekly slot. But our publisher knows it’s not worth sending me to London for a whole day, just for five minutes of TV airtime. It seems a bit late now, since our PR department had been sucking up to Helen for ages. Maybe I gained a victory in vain.

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Cotton,

I’m from Future’s PR department and we’ve had a request for you to do a TV piece about the role of the internet for online democracy.

It would take place on 25 April between 5 to 7pm in Surrey. The programme will be made by a company for an IT network which goes out to hardware retailers.

Let me know if you can do this I’ll be happy to give you more info!

Thanks,

Claire

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To: Claire

Can we film this in Bath? Noone here can be bothered going to Surrey,  since hardware retailers aren’t our core readership.

Cotton

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From: Claire

They’re insisting they’d have to film it in Surrey.

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To: Claire

Forget it.

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+ The Esther Rantzen Show rings. They’re looking for marriage bust-ups caused by a partner committing adultery over the Net. I can’t give them any, as all of my sources want to remain anonymous.

+ The BBC Today radio show is in a tizz because they’re concerned that more people had logged on to the NASA site in one night than had watched the BBC Mars TV special. Will the Net soon be replacing TV, a researcher fretted? I patiently explained that maybe it was because the BBC coverage ended before even one crummy pic from Mars was beamed through. Viewers were told the pics would be broadcast at 8am the *next day*. Outrageous. No wonder everyone turned to the Net.

+ The London Daily Telegraph’s royalty reporter asks for a comment about the Royal Web site, which claimed it had attracted 12 million hits within a month. I explained that figure probably included the number of graphics downloaded, so the correct number of visitors was more like 2million. My quotes appeared on page three.

+ Went to the Computer Channel again. They told me the day before I had to chat about four news topics.  I picked email viruses, porn, chain letters and email being used for office gossip.

I sat upstairs with four computer software salesmen in blue suits.  They talked shop about speedy computer processing units.

W put his arm around me and kissed the top of my head flirtatiously and quickly took his seat. The cameras rolled. “We had Cotton Ward on a couple of weeks ago, and due to the enormous number of your emails and letters, I was forced to recapitulate and have her back here again,” W said, tongue in cheek.

W didn’t seem to be listening to a word I said and simply repeated one of my sentences as a conclusion, then steamrolled on to the next subject. This meant my email virus hoax story was completely wrong, as he’d cut me short as I was explaining how a previously harmless program was now a destructive virus. Oh well.

“We know you spend a lot of time looking at porn, so tell us about it,” he said. I spouted my censorship spiel and W said he never lets his kids use the Internet, as “it’s too dangerous”.

The segment was finished in one take, then W held a piece of white paper up and pretended to kiss me behind it. “We must do lunch,” he suggested. “I’ve got another interview to do,” I quickly lied. “When?” “At 1 o’clock.” He insisted on swapping e-mail addresses. “I don’t want your business adddress – I want your personal e-mail,” he said. So I gave him fake details, he wrote his down in my black book, and I escaped in a mini-cab.

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+ After two weeks of gallivanting around doing media appearances, my bosses cracked down. I’d been invited to appear on a consumer program, The Really Useful Show, to discuss Internet shopping. I couldn’t have a day off every week for media appearances. But it was a bit of fun and frivolity.

Techno-realist and best-selling author of The Cuckoo’s Egg, Internet legend Clifford Stoll, has been online for over 15 years and knows the Net backwards. He built his first computer himself and was wired into Arpanet (precursor to the Internet) in the 1970s. He also writes code, has seven computers and six different online accounts. After exposing high-tech hacker hijinks in spy novel The Cuckoo’s Egg, Stoll has turned about face in his latest book, Silicon Snake Oil, and says it’s time to examine our “love affair” with computers.

He’s hyperactive and has crazy, frazzled hair and suggests we go to a café. We sauntered round to the pleasant Cannelle patisserie in Chelsea in search of some confectioner’s custard and chatted for an hour or so, under huge black and white Mapplethorpe, Norman Parkinson and Ruth Orkin prints. Stoll had strong coffee.

He answered my apology for writing down notes, rather than using a tape recorder with: “Don’t apologise – it’s more intuitive. It’s easier. Recording denies the fun part. You don’t have to check the batteries. If you were typing down what I was saying on a laptop computer, it wouldn’t feel as friendly. I can draw an image on your notepaper, but I can’t do that with a tape recorder.”

He then grabbed my pen and scrawled a triangle with the words “good”, “cheap” and “fast” written at each point. “This principle is as old as capitalism. You can never get all three. And yet this is what the Internet promises. You can have cheap, good food, but it isn’t fast. Or cheap, fast food of low quality. It’s an economic theory. And we’re being sold on the idea of the Internet as providing all three qualities. I don’t believe it’s possible.”

Then I plunged in with my leading question: “When I started reading your book, Cliff, I felt like, oh, this guy’s obviously sat in front of his computer far too much and has now woken up to the fact that he’s spent 20 years thinking, `Well, what have I done? I should have spent more time smelling the flowers.’ But I just felt – well, so what? A lot of us already know that.”

“Good point,” Stoll said, gesticulating enthusiastically. “But I’m aiming the book at myself. I’m asking why is it that I love computers, but distrust the culture of computing? Why am I so ambivalent? Why don’t I believe much of the wonderment surrounding the Internet? So I started out by saying, maybe the problem is that I’ve spent too much time online. And I have. But then, that led me to ask questions about where society is being led.

“Maybe our love affair with computers isn’t such a good thing. At the end of a day of surfing the Net, am I satisfied? No. I’ve learnt damn little. It’s a profoundly shallow experience. I’ve uploaded and downloaded countless stuff, but most of it’s a big sinkhole of mediocrity. I yearn for some scepticism, some critical views of the Internet, rather than the bloated hyperbole of the popular press.”

Stoll is such a hyperactive, frenetic individual that it’s difficult to imagine him sitting still in front of his computer even for a second. He frequently jumps out of his chair to make a point, punches the air and skips up and down the cafe past the cabinets of souffle framboises and charlotte fruits rouges, while emphasising that there is a cost to spending too much time online.

“I’m an old hippy,” Stoll concedes. “We hear about cyborgs and network addicts who are online 18 hours a day. When we’re online we’re isolated and alone – I can’t share my keyboard with someone or carry on a conversation while simultaneously looking at my monitor. I could have been deepening friendships, meeting other people or speaking with colleagues instead of tapping on my keyboard.

“I prefer the sceptical view of network systems to an innocent Pollyanna acceptance of the Internet as a virtual community which is warm, welcoming and helpful. It’s actually cold, sterile and littered with rude commentary. Usenet bulletin boards are sprinkled with flame wars, uncivil and nasty messages.”

He disagrees that as more people go online, the discussion will become more civil. “It’ll get worse. Postings remind me of the short-term animosity between drivers in heavy traffic.”

“Road rage?”

“Yeah – is that what you call it here? It’s a great term,” he said, spontaneously grabbing a purple ink fountain pen out of his green corduroy shirt and inscribing the words on his left palm.

Stoll also doubts whether a larger number of online magazines will raise the standard of Internet content. “The amount of good material will increase, but the noise, glunk and gloop will increase at a much faster rate. If I saw Ted Kennedy and Princess Diana holding hands on a beach on an island that Jackie Onassis used to own, I’m obviously not going to give that away free on the Net. I’m going to sell it to a publisher. If you have anything worth communicating, you’re not going to give it away free online. Also, as network costs drop and paper prices skyrocket, the most valued writing will be on paper, and those of least value will go on the Net.”

He says computers are seen as a universal tool to solve organisational problems. “But for many people a paper calendar on the wall, an address book in your pocket, a Rolodex on your desk, a shoebox for bills and a carton of letters to answer are acceptably workable ways of dealing with these daily problems. In many ways, these methods are superior to use because they’re intuitive. I can instantly find what I’m looking for.

“The arrogance of computer folk if that they try to belittle and beat people who don’t use fancy computer programs into submission. These people then think: `There’s something wrong with me because I don’t understand why I don’t spend twice as much time using more complicated technology.’ But computers are often inappropriate for what you want to do.”

As for PCs in schools, Stoll says: “Using PCs is as simple as learning how to drive. They don’t teach driving at high school. It only takes a couple of weeks to learn the basics of word processing and spreadsheet programs. Two months of education at the most. That’s not enough to warrant even a full semester on computing. In the US every school is graded on how many computers it has. Computer programming is not a life skill or guarantee of getting a job.”

The ambiance was ruptured by the publicist’s sudden return, and she whisked Stoll away. “Gad zooks! It was a tickle of delight to meet you,” he said. And indeed it was.

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Chief Luddite

Bill Henderson, 56, is the US-based leader of a 3000-strong revolution of Lead Pencil Club reactionaries who are rejecting electronic gadgets and going “back to basics”. This doesn’t mean they live without electricity and telephones and supermarkets – but they’re turning off the bombardment of information and rejecting fast communications. “We want no part of your new Apocalyptic religion, your demi-gods of Speed and Convenience. As to your ubiquitous proclamation of the forthcoming Information Age, you must be daft. We are drowning in information right now,” Henderson says.

“The international electronics industry is fattening its purse while brain-draining this civilisation. Try not to use the Internet and computers. People who do are sick of being human beings. You have to face up to pain, war and death. Life isn’t always a picnic, but you can’t escape in a fantasy world. It catches up with you. You have to get out in the fresh air and grow up. Look at Bill Gates – he’s a fixated 14-year-old playing with gizmos. Hardly a good role model.

He says the hype about computers is similar to when television was introduced. “Everyone touted it as being a great educational tool. The computer is supposed to solve all of our problems – that’s what Bill Gates implies. `Multimedia will revolutionise classes. They’re the greatest boon to humanity.’ But revolutions come and go and they’re often accompanied by a lot of egotism and mass suffering.”

And what does he think about futurists who say the problems with Luddites will vanish because “they’ll all be dead soon”? “Techno-utopians have a lot of arrogance,” Henderson says. He cites Stewart Brand of Whole Earth Catalogue fame who said: “We are as gods and we might as well get good at it.” “This is a damning quote,” Henderson says. “People talk as though they are gods. Hitler thought he was god. We are not gods. This line of thinking is a real disaster. According to techno-evangelists, the digital revolution is the most stunning advance in evolution since the capture of fire.”

As for relying on computers to perform any functions for you, Henderson says this is a betrayal of our human talents. “Some people don’t want to make any effort whatsoever, so they use machines to do everything for them. They’d spend the whole day in bed if they could.” But what’s wrong with that? “Your mind and body would atrophy. Any time you give your mind to a machine you’re taking something away from yourself. You could be doing maths using your brain instead of grabbing a calculator, and writing or using a typewriter. I generally spend my time scribbling with a pencil. It’s a lot cheaper and simpler – you get an instant printout on the page in front of you. Computers are always breaking down. My wife has a computer for word processing – she’s not connected to the Internet. I’ve never used it. I’ve watched people using computers. But I like to keep things simple.”

The club’s pledges include: “We will avoid fax and hang up on voice mail. We will receive no email and send none. If our computers develop a virus, we will seek no cure. Our communications will be face to face. If direct human contact is not possible, we will write letters in our own handwriting because that handwriting is a mark of our personality. In our correspondence, we will favour the lead pencil, that quirky little expendable that the superhighway would like to forget as it rushes past on its way to oblivion. What’s your hurry? Not So Fast! Leadites Unite!”

Henderson warns that: “If you use the computer too much, you develop things such as Repetitive Strain Injury and carpal tunnel syndrome. You’re like battery hens that never see natural light. Well, alright – I’m using that disaster scenario as a bit of an exaggeration, but you have to be vigilant and have balance. We’re being oppressed by omnipresent machines.”

As for the information revolution, he says we have too much already. “I subscribe to four magazines and often don’t read one. It took me a whole year to read The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky. We have TV, radio, newspapers, books – it’s horrendous nonsense. We don’t need all of this stuff. The computer manufacturers are trying to create a `forced need’ that doesn’t exist.

He says the negative side of the Internet is that everything you order can be monitored. “You just become an international statistic for global corporations. Marketing departments can pin you down on a map like cockroaches, sorted according to buying preferences. Big bucks will control cyberspace. The Web is a duck primed for slaughter. Soon, every company will have a site and the Web will resemble a global Yellow Pages – and you know how much fun it is to flick through a phone book. Great.”

As for porn and sex on the Net, Henderson describes this as “sad”. “It’s beyond hilarious. There’s nothing like sex with a real person. Online, you don’t always even know who you’re having sex with.” But what other case, such as the disabled? “There’ll always be exceptions, but they can use horny mags. I don’t think the Net is totally bad – it has a lot of good medical uses for coordinating scientific and academic research. But 99 per cent of us can do without it. Otherwise, people should use it in moderation or not at all.”

Henderson’s opinions caused a sensation when he founded the club in 1993, and he wrote the editorial opinion section for the New York Times in 1994. “The Lead Pencil Club started off as a letter to our Little Long Island newspaper – it was just lark. I was reading a book in December 1993 at 3am and the author, Doris Grumbach, was complaining about gadgets in her memoir Extra Innings. She was sick of them and wished they would catch a virus for which there was no cure. I thought about it and agreed. `Why not use a lead pencil and start a club for those of us who agree with her?’ I asked myself. The next day I phone Doris with my idea and she liked it. I wrote the letter as a satire and did it just for a laugh. I got a huge response. Many of our members are former computer users who used to work for IBM, but became frustrated.”

He says the club has about 3000 members worldwide. “You have to keep everything in perspective – 90 per cent of the world’s population don’t even have access to a computer. 200million Americans don’t have computers at home – a lot use fancy typewriters. We publish the Minutes throughout the world, and we post a newsletter edition too. Our motto is that we’re in no big hurry. `Not so fast’. So what – it might take us another day to finish a task. We’re not in a rush.”

It’s easy for Henderson to rant on about eschewing technology, but what about those of us who have to earn a living in office jobs? “I run a one-person business and when I have to write legal documents I use a 1942 Royal manual typewriter. Otherwise I handwrite my letters. Now you can get computer programs with 300 fonts to emulate your handwriting. It’s utterly hilarious. Why do you need a $3000 machine to do something you can do by hand? While all those Net nerds are suffering from stress and too much gazing at the screen, we’ll be out in the fields and boating. Our place in the world will probably be offering de-stressful alternative breaks for techno-addicts.

“All of my friends have computers and they try to persuade me that it’s worthwhile, but we agree to disagree.”

To join the Lead Pencil Club, sent a letter to The Lead Pencil Club, PO Box 380, Wainscott, NY 11975. Acceptance is automatic and there are no membership fees.

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Technophobia and how to overcome it

Technophobes need to shed their fears gradually to adjust to a rapidly changing electronic world. A “Predictors of Computer Anxiety” study, conducted by Alistair Anderson from Deakin University in Australia, found that one in 10 university-aged students suffered from technophobia, which included symptoms such as breaking out in a cold sweat and an increased heart rate.

The ultimate infamous technophobe is the Unabomber, the hooded, nameless abstraction behind aviator shades who bragged, maimed, and murdered his way into a position to have a 35,000-word manifesto published by The Washington Post last year. He wielded terror for 17 years with letter bombs to high-tech research scientists and computer stores. US police are now investigating a suspect, Theodore J Kaczynski, who was a maths prodigy and graduated from Harvard during his teenage years. Until his arrest, he was an “unkempt mountain man” with “heavily matted hair” who lived in a “tar-paper shack” he’d built himself and used to exist on “cans of Spam and tuna.” His court case will be heard in November 1997 and is expected to last for four months.

Psychologist Martin Corbett, a senior lecturer at Warwick Business School, is an expert on computer technophobia. He discovered this condition is, unsurprisingly, often caused by resentment and fear. “People believe technology is a good thing, but think it’s out of control – a sort of Frankenstein complex, which has taken on a life of its own,” Corbett explains. He says businesses often sack staff to offset the costs of new technology. “This gives people the idea they’re in second place. And machines are often pampered and treated better. Staff aren’t allowed to drink or eat near the computer in case they damage it.” Many people have more faith in machines, and this can lead to misplaced trust. “Staff have to check everything out on the computer first. Somewhere along the line, it has been forgotten that a human programmed the computer in the first place.”

Technophobia can be treated. In serious cases, a combination of drugs-of-your-choice therapy and off-the-top-of-my-head-advice can be used to “think” your way to freedom from fear. This can be a gradual process, so you may have to repeat these steps innumerable times, until you get it right.

No-nonsense self-help plan for technophobia

1. List what you want to achieve. Start with something modest, for example “I will walk into the room, switch on my PC, wait three minutes for it to boot up, select the Internet icon, breathe deeply a couple of times, exit all programs and turn the machine off.”

2. Write down words of encouragement on prompt cards. “My modem is supposed to make funny beepy noises and have flashing red lights. This is perfectly normal. It is not on fire. It will not explode.”

3. Desensitise yourself by imagining that you’re confronting your phobia. Keep thinking about using your PC after 9pm when the technical support lines have closed, until this ceases to terrify you.

4. Make a timetable for carrying out each confrontation session. Start off with something not too difficult. Right-click the mouse button while using your Web browser. Ooh – what’s that on your screen? Haven’t seen that before. “This program has performed an illegal function.” Leave the room quickly and phone the police.

5. Note your progress by ringing your Mum and telling her what you’ve achieved at the end of each session.

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Information overload

You’ve got 1,000 email messages, 2 billion faxes, 10 letters and the phone keeps ringing. You might feel like you’re dealing with too much incoming data, but – hey – maybe it’s just you. Look around at your office colleagues – they seem to be doing fine. Except that they never speak, and are always curt and rude whenever you make conversation. Well, maybe that’s just me. But truly – abrupt co-workers are displaying classic symptoms of “information overload”. No time for ergonomic breaks. Just burn through and churn it out. After all, your boss just spent trillions on installing that great Internet connection to make your life easier, so you should be able to produce vaster quantities of work with all that instant information at your fingertips.

When you’re in this situation, it’s little comfort to read the often-spouted figures about how a weekday edition of [insert newspaper name of your choice] contains more information than 17^th Century peasants used to encounter in their entire lifetimes.

A recent Communications Overload study by Gallup and the Institute for the Future showed that a typical middle-management executive sends or receives 178 messages and documents daily. Secretaries deal with about 190 letters, emails, faxes, phone calls, voicemail, sticky notes, pager messages, courier deliveries and internal mail. Employees are interrupted at least three times an hour by messages and about 70 per cent felt “overwhelmed”. Also, as people try to contact others, they encounter a communications “gridlock”, so they send the same messages by different methods, which makes everything worse. You know – when someone sends a fax, then rings to ask whether you got it, and if it went missing they send an email, then ring again to check and – well, why don’t they put it in the post, too?

The cold, hard facts are that you’ll be *burnt out* by the time you hit your 40s if you haven’t managed to “switch off”. Worse, you’ll have to retire early because you won’t be able to cope anymore. That’s the brutal news from Professor Cary Cooper, an organisational psychologist at Manchester University, and foremost pioneer in workplace stress. And these problems aren’t happening down the track – we’re burning out *right now*! Cooper’s been using the Net since 1994. “We’re in the middle of a crisis – people are overloaded with email, Web information, faxes, voicemail and the expectation that we must produce work faster. No one ever prioritises any of these messages, so we have to treat each one as though it might be vitally important. We can’t afford to overlook anything.” He says it’s ironic that technology is designed to “minimise stress levels”. “Instead, we’re all rushing around so frenetically, harassed and time-driven. Everything is urgent. Worry is burning us out. We have to spend so much time with technology, and then we lose our support mechanisms when we’re taken away from face-to-face communication. I wish the industry would find ways of helping us sort through all this junk on the Web. It’s so overloaded with rubbish. People are just going to switch off and not use it. That’s the backlash and it’s already happening. The main problem is 90 per cent of the stuff is advertising. How do I access worthwhile material? It’s all thrown in together. When I search for a phrase such as `occupational stress test’, I often have to scroll through 20 pages of results before I find what I need.” But surely Prof Cooper’s forgetting the prehistoric Net days in 1993 when academics were ecstatic they could key in a phrase and get an answer back after 15 minutes? “Our tolerance is less now. The technology is promoted as being quick, but it’s not. We want instant answers.”

But what about intelligent agents? I’ve tried most of them and none have been any better than search engines. “I’ve given up on intelligent agents and search engines don’t help at all,” Cooper says dismissively.

He points out that one of the difficulties employees now face is the fact that senior management often spend zillions on buying up-to-the-minute technology, but they never use it themselves, and don’t realise it hasn’t made your life incredibly easier. “Managers, who are mainly computer illiterate, don’t need to use the new technologies, and they assume you can find all you want in five minutes. These expectations are a major cause of stress. Reality is very different from what they’ve read on the computer sales brochures.”

He says one of the worst time-consuming culprits is email. “Everyone’s forgotten how to prioritise. When people send you email, they should honestly indicate how urgent it is. Otherwise, you just get a wall of emails that demand such an immediate response and speed up the pace of work, because it’s so easy to respond. You feel like you must respond, or you’ll have too many messages to sort through later. Who wants to spend their weekends dealing with email? You either do it there or them, or you forget about them. I often forget if I don’t reply the same day. Once you’ve answered lots of emails, you’ve lost focus of your main priority – getting your work done.”

This is awfully difficult to balance, of course, when reading the emails can be vital to your work. “We have to make sure people aren’t spending too many hours in front of a machine. There are people I work with who are endlessly on the Net and they’ve lost something. They think they have a solid communication network, but the true network is face-to-face.” On the upside, he says the Net offers us the chance to telecommute. “We can work at home and do more in peace.”

Before you sit back and start getting cosy, however, we managed to track down the author of Data Smog: Surviving the information glut [Harper Collins] by US author and Wired correspondent David Shenk, who says we’re “on the brink of an Attention Deficiency Disorder (ADD) epidemic”. “Experts are now seeing a new manifestation of what they call `culturally induced ADD,” Shenk exclaims. “We’re all doing three things at once and missing out on things like slow sunsets, long conversations and reading books. ADD is a symptom of the information age.”

He cites the research of Philip Nicholson, who specialises in `technostress’. Nicholson believes many computer users develop feelings of “deep dependency” on their machines, and think they couldn’t function without them. To test this hypothesis, he often asks his audience to pretend they were faced with the dilemma of making a choice between giving up one of their fingers and giving up the use of their computers for the rest of their lives. He reports that one-third of the people he surveys chooses to give up a finger. The awful thing is, I paused to consider this too. “I had to think about it,” Shenk agrees. “It’s amazing how dependent we are.”

He thinks the concept of having a computer with a Net connection in every classroom is a waste of money. “People think this will automatically improve schools, but learning depends on having good teachers, excellent text books and small classes. When TV was introduced everyone thought it was going to be a fantastic educational tool, but the problem is most people use it for entertainment. A computer may have a place in a school library, but not in classrooms. Genius is only created by learning.”

He also disputes that online voting would improve the political process. “Now we can be heard and form interest groups on the Net, but politicians are paying too much attention to what we want. They’re afraid to get out and lead. The public isn’t always informed on every issue. That’s the politician’s job and why we elect them. Direct democracy isn’t a great idea either. It would just make our lives more complicated. Who wants to get home and then start going through legislation and making decisions? We’re already buried by our own work. We have to elect and trust our representatives.” The fervour for online voting, however, means that “democracy will have 50/50 chance of survival”. “There are already Net users who think we don’t need a central government anymore, and we can make all of our own decisions.”

In his book, Shenk quotes Sun Microsystems Eric Schmidt as saying “With a computer network, I can attack a million people at a time. It’s like an atomic bomb.”  “This statement is obviously hyperbole,” Shenk says. “The network can’t kill millions of people, but it can cause serious damage. Computer viruses can disable your phone, stop electricity supplies and everyone will be very vulnerable.”

According to Shenk, computers may “fuel an age of immense commercial, cultural and political possibility,”, but they also contribute to “skyrocketing levels of stress and depression, a dangerous fragmentation of culture, a stimulus-dense society with fewer escapes, a dangerous use of database technology.”

He says the Net is contributing to the “stretching and splintering” of culture. “Circulation has dropped at general interest magazines, like Reader’s Digest, Time and Life, and readers are going for specialised, niche magazines. It’s just like a large cocktail party that breaks up into a string of small conversations. We fragment into little clusters. This is great for researchers, and marketers call this `nichification’ and it’s an important part of improving our quality of life. But there’s also a big price to be paid in separation.”

For this reason, Shenk says we shouldn’t use intelligent agents. “Agents are personalised, and mean we don’t have to share information with anyone who’s not exactly like us. This customisation depletes our community spirit. We know less about people with different interests.”

He quotes Nicholas Negroponte, who insists smart agents should include an adjustable “serendipity dial”. “But you can’t automate spontaneity,” Shenk points out. “Such restrictions are like building one’s own information prison. We have to make an effort to avoid filters and make our own decisions. Otherwise, technology will lead us into narrower worlds where we spend less time interacting with people outside our range of interests. Democracy is dependent on a certain amount of tolerance and consensus and the ability to understand a wide variety of perspectives.”

Why do we put up with all of this? Because we’re incurable “techno-utopians”, Shenk says. “We assume that machines will always improve society, without questioning the unintended consequences. It is possible to use technology to get extra free time, but people get used to superfast communication, they speed up and become addicted to the quicker pace.”

The UK’s foremost expert in Internet addiction, Dr Mark Griffiths, of Nottingham Trent University, was overcome with data overload when he first logged on to the Net in early 1995. He recounts a horrific tale of counter-productiveness and information promiscuity. Griffiths says even his personality has been affected by too much Net usage. “I’ve noticed the downside is that I’ve totally gone over to the soundbite culture. I read everything in bite-sized pieces now. I can’t get through more than six pages without going brain-dead. It’s even affected my writing – I only write lots of small articles now. My last book was made up of 40 edited papers. My impatience levels have soared. If my browser is `unable to locate host’, it bugs me to death.”

When he first got on the Net, Griffiths wanted “thick, fast and immediate rewards”. “I subscribed to everything going,” he confesses. “I was getting 100 emails a day from newsgroups. It took me four months to work out that 98 per cent of it was garbage. I was away for a week and I had 700 emails to answer when I returned. It got really daunting. There were only 10 I wanted to read, but you can’t skip any of them. It took me hours to open them all.

“I wanted to be on the cutting edge, but there was no real advancement in the academic discussion. People were promoting their own fixed points of views, which I’d already read, or were emailing and saying they agreed with me, which didn’t really help. I was bombarded with so much — I was swamped.” He says that although he thinks “dissemination of information is a good thing”, he couldn’t “see the wood for the trees”.

He used to try and skim everything on the Net. “But then I’d miss important news. I could spend an hour every day looking at the Unofficial Lotto Site – I study gambling addiction, and it always has new sales figures, draws, popular numbers and ticket price structures. This is relevant to my work, but I just can’t spend that much time on it. I’ve learnt to be more selective.”

He still uses email daily, but only surfs the Net for research twice a week. “I check my email first, then voicemail, then my pigeon-hole. I never carry a mobile phone and I tried using a laptop on the train, but I went back to using a pen and pad – it makes me feel more in control. Before, I used to feel like a pinball, always being contactable.”

Now he clichedly says he “puts all his eggs in one basket” and only reads one newspaper daily. “I rely on colleagues to give me relevant clippings if they see something and I do the same for them. It’s an old fashioned system, but it saves time.”

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Shenk’s tips to clear Data Smog

1.   Turn the television off. “There’s no quicker way to regain control of the pace of your life”.

2.   Say `No!’ to dataveillance. Follow instructions on junk email to unsubscribe from lists.

3.   Resist advertising.

4.   Resist upgrade mania.

5.   Be your own “smart agent”. Learn to discriminate.

6.   Cleanse your system with “data-fasts”. Examine your daily intake and consider whether your info diet needs fine-tuning. Take data-naps in the afternoon, during which you stay away from electronic information for a set period. Try to go for a week or month without using the Net, and this can have a remarkably rejuvenating effect.

7.   Set yourself a certain number of hours on the Net each week, or at least balance the amount of time spent online with an equal amount of time reading books.

8.   Lobby the government to legislate against data spam.

9.   Reformulate the issue of “information have-nots”. “Disenfranchised citizens don’t need bottomless wells of information. They need education. There is an important difference.”

Cooper’s list of what to do

1.   Learn how to manage the technology.

2.   Send your senior managers on training courses so they know the technology’s limitations.

3.   Avoid all mail lists.

4.   Tell your regular contacts to prioritise messages.

5.   Ask your boss to hire a Web researcher to trawl through all the junk and present you with the best information.

6.   Sort your emails into lots of folders to prioritise them.

7.   Don’t give out your contact details to everyone.

8.   Think of your own ways to avoid spending too many hours in front of a machine.

9.   Leave a message on your voicemail saying that callers shouldn’t leave a message unless the matter needs dealing with today.

10. To avoid burnout, restrict the number of inquiries or messages you deal with – only 10 if you are under 45 and five if you’re older.

These three philosophers have steadfastly clung to their youthful ideals, and keep infecting society with unease, prodding our consciousness and asking “Why?” Despite their clear vision of society’s shortcomings, they’re all so enamoured of life, and endeavour to deliver their jibes with a dose of humour.

RU Sirius invented cyberculture with the most outrageous magazine of the 90s, Mondo 2000. Our photographer had popped round to take some Hello!-style pics of Sirius relaxing at home. “It looked exactly like that place in Silence of the Lambs where that psycho tortures the girls. Except without the well. Eerie,” he told me. Unsurprising, really, as Sirius is a 45-year-old who specialises in delivering a surreal take on reality and trying to offend people whenever he can. In 1996 he told journalist Jon Lebkowsky, “Give me a million dollars and I’ll bring you major cultural and political change within four years. I want to be bigger than Satan.”

Apart from being a megalomaniac, he’s a renowned prankster and veteran of the San Francisco Bay cyberpunk scene who is a former editor in chief of trend-setting magazine Mondo 2000 (forerunner of Wired), has been featured in a Time cover story, guested on Phil Donohue, and says he lusts after teenage girls. Oh, and he’s also been in a virtual reality rock band, Mondo Vanilli. Sirius has been described as a “head on the Mt Rushmore of cyberculture”, “overindulged brat”, “bohemian hustler who makes Aleister Crowley look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm”, “long-haired leprechaun”, and a “wildly entertaining fellow”.

Mondo began in 1989, and Sirius recently guest-edited two issues. The magazine’s style is irreverent, ridiculous and science “factional”. In the early days, its revolutionary design made it practically unreadable, with a fluorescent cut-and-paste aesthetic. Even the editorial had a prankster quality to it, and was often incomprehensible and rambled on about unreal futuristic concepts that had the media phoning up for further meaningless details. At its peak in 1993, it had a circulation of 100,000 copies and an incredibly successful book, Mondo 2000: A User’s Guide To The New Edge, that reached number one in the “alternative” bestseller lists.

Sirius had worked on several newsletters promoting subjects such as time travel and experimental mail-order designer drugs (peyote, ketamine, DMT, MMDA, 2CB, 2CE) which had not yet been outlawed, but finally he realised that computers and digital enhancements could make a large impact on society. Mondo 2000 began running articles by William Gibson, hacker stories, conspiracy theories, Internet viruses and cutting-edge technology. They stole artistic ideas and images, stories and called it “appropriation”. The magazine promoted the hacker ethic and began posting to the WELL, the hip San Franciscan on-line chat room. “The Mondo years, 1989 to 1993, were way fun, but they were also pretty stressful. I don’t remember much about the early days. To know what it was like you’d have to read Alice In Wonderland and the collected works of Kafka as though they were business manuals,” Sirius recalls. “The period when we were doing the psychedelic magazine High Frontiers [1984 to 1988], was in many ways more fun and less stressful. And more enlightened. There’s nothing quite like frequent doses of psychedelic drugs to keep a person happy and healthy, when one knows how to handle them properly. Still, I’d rather watch Ren and Stimpy on caffeine than experience virtual reality on smart drugs. ”

He’s co-authored three books: Design For The Dying with acid guru Dr Timothy Leary,  Cyberpunk Handbook: the Real Cyberpunk Fakebook and How to Mutate And Take Over The World (a tongue-in-cheek guide on how to conduct a guerrilla war against censorship of the Internet), both written with Mondo colleague, St Jude. He also contributes to Wired, bOING bOING, Esquire, Time and Omni. Now Sirius is planning to send-up the media at his new site, Revolting. “Revolting will be a meta-tabloid. Sort of like Weekly World News on Acid,” Sirius exhorts. “Tune in for startling revelations about Bill Clinton’s acid-taking days, Hillary naked, a game called Six Degrees of Paranoia, the Authentic Secret Diary of A Heaven’s Gate Cult Member, and much more.”

Sirius discussed the importance of guerrilla tactics on the Net to preserve freedom of information in his book How To Mutate And Take Over The World and he’s planning to use some of these at Revolting. “The big problem with freedom of communication on the Web is excessive copyright and trademark protection. Bianca’s Smut Shack, for instance, is being sued by Radio Shack for using the word `Shack’. The absurdity of this is apparent but Radio Shack wins because they have the lawyers. Wired has trademarked the term `Digital Revolution’. One of the guerrilla actions we’ll be doing is violating trademark, copyright and libel laws in 24-hour spurts. We’ll put something up like an ad that says `REVOLTING! the Wired Home of the Digital Revolution’, but we’ll have it down within 24 hours. By the time we get the cease and desist letters, we’ll have ceased and desisted.”

He says guerrilla tactics are not yet needed to preserve freedom on the Internet, unless a high degree of government censorship is implemented. “To combat censorship, underground groups might form Temporary Autonomous Zones, areas for free speech protected by encryption. Also, since it’s easy to gain anonymous access to the Net, freedom ranters could appear on heavily censored lists spewing obscenities. They might find ways to make it difficult to remove their posts. Media guerrillas have to be great entertainers. If you pirate a TV station, it has to be a fun event so everyone’s waiting for the next broadcast.

“I’m a free speech absolutist. I’ve had an infestation of Nazis on the Mutate Project’s public forums. I didn’t censor them. Criticise them, ignore them, make fun of them, admire their closet homosexual impulses. And of course, I’m in favour of *killing* Nazis. But I’m against censoring them.”

RU has had such an eclectic career – after reading his extensive on-line biography, I shortcutted to several questions.

You’re a renowned trendspotter. What’s going to happen?

“People will grow bored with communicating about the technology of communication, and will start actually communicating. That doesn’t mean a lovefest. That means the spontaneous, unexpurgated, uncensored expression of layers of human perversity heretofore unexpressed.”

At Mondo, the staff often breached copyright and stole images and re-worked them. Will you do this at Revolting?

“Appropriation must continue, particularly when making media collages. It’s an appropriate response to our world. We’re in an era where it’s easy to copy informational stuff, either to have it for yourself, share with friends, or remake it. Unless we want Big Brother in everybody’s home and on everybody’s desktop, we need to accept the fact that stuff that’s easy to copy will get copied. The whole situation around information as property isn’t resolvable under the current social system that requires artists and software writers to make money. It’s just one more contradiction that’s leading to the breakdown of the current configuration.”

What was it like being on the Phil Donohue show as editor-in-chief of Mondo 2000? And the cover story in Time?

“Well, it’s no big deal to be on the Phil Donohue show. All you have to do is have sex with your sister involving mallomars, high heel shoes, and toad urine. And besides, I had flu the day I went on. So it was a drag. The story in Time was pretty exciting. But I’ll tell you what. Among Mondo fans, I heard more comments about the Mondo 2000 parody that was in bOING bOING, a small 10,000 circulation zine, than I did about the Time article. Mondoids don’t read Time.”

Have you ever had jackbooted motherfuckers kicking down your door, or has your paranoia been unfounded?

“I was a Yippie during the 70s, so paranoia is a kind of casual drug for me. I did have jackbooted motherfuckers kicking down my door but they were looking for my friend, not me.”

Have you ever had an experience of online love?

“I’ve never really connected for sex via a computer. I’ve had a few written masturbatory exchanges but found them less satisfactory than jacking off to photos of silicone-enhanced bimbos in Club International. The masturbatory exchanges are unsatisfactory because they never get actualised in real space. The girls always chickenshit out. Girls… ahem… women… love to take me to third base, generally speaking. Am I still in fucking high school or what!!?”

Do you think the Web will retain its alternative culture once it has reached the masses?

“The Web, and worldwide youth culture in general, isn’t involved with alternative culture or mainstream culture anymore. I think it’s tribalised. It involves *subcultures*. The Web by its nature increases this tendency. Where there used to be a few TV channels, Top 40 radio, the mainstream entertainment industry, and the politicians dominating the attentions of the masses, now there’s billions of possible signals to choose from. Once the quality of video and audio become competitive on the Web, people will be dealing with millions of broadcasters. The generations raised under those conditions won’t even know what consensus reality *is!*”

What will happen to Luddites who can’t come to grips with new technology?

“Ummm, depending on how things go, they’ll either die or they won’t have to work. Mondo 2000 and Wired are responsible for the romanticisation of technologies that were counterintuitive and aren’t completely finished. Before Mondo, people would see things such as virtual reality and be astounded. Now they complain because it doesn’t give them instant gratification.”

Do you think the Net will break down fragile national barriers, thus causing a World War 3-scale backlash?

“Yes. I can easily imagine several waves of violence induced by the panic caused by the invasion of the global media village on various fundamentalist cultures, particularly Moslem and Christian. We already see this with the militias in the US. The fact that the existing governance of the global village, the so-called New World Order of the mega-corporations and their downsized, lapdog, pseudo-democratic nation states is a total scam intensifies the probability of bloody and reactionary revolutions.”

Should we try to give everyone universal access?

“I’m in favour of ‘free’. Wherever possible, move stuff out of the market, but keep it away from the bureaucratic collective. Just give away modems. Yes. For the price of one major Hollywood movie.”

You’re interested in changing the human organism with replaceable parts, nanotechnology, increasing intelligence with add-ons and other extropian stuff – what would be your favourite “enhancement”?

“A 14″ penis that can be switched to erection on any occasion.”

Why do you often use obscene language?

“Opposition to `degenerate’ art and impure, obscene forms of communication were central tenets of Nazism and Stalinism. So, the right to be obscene and disgusting is very important. It’s absolutely ludicrous to type s*** and f*** instead of the actual words, when everybody knows what the actual words are. That the letters `hit’ and `uck’ provoke defensive action DEFINES the term “superstitious savages!”

How’s your post-scarcity info-com era political statement going? Please explain your quote: “Zero sum economics could be obsolete in cybernetic culture and a new economy could be based around complexity theory”?

“I need about three months of isolation to compose a larger statement.  Briefly, the economic presumptions of today are based around supply and demand, and scarcity. Cybernetic methods of information control and production make this obsolete. Just look at the Web. Supply isn’t the issue. Attention is the issue. On a worldwide scale, we’re not in a simple system that can be modelled according to straightforward linear mathematical processes that have to be “zeroed out”. We’re in a highly complex system that should be mapped out by complexity theory.

What happens when we’re able to actually double the real wealth in the world in the course of a few years? All the economists will be screaming about inflation. The solution? Easy. Shoot the economists!”

What could make society better than it is now? What would that society be like?

“The end of scarcity. The current levels of antagonism, paranoia, and dis-ease will be vastly moderated when people aren’t forced into a position where they’ll do *anything* for money. I’m not talking about socialism. I’m talking about a situation where it’s more practical to give wealth away than it is to hoard it.”

Do you really think big business will kill the poor?

“Step by step. In America, we just sentenced a few million people to the streets last year. The homeless that are out there now are already thoroughly dehumanised. People don’t want to know about it. Torture in America’s concentration camps known as the prison/industrial complex is the source of humor for late night television comedy.”

What should we do to avoid being killed?

“Individually? Get rich! Collectively? Understand how the money scam is being played and don’t buy into the slave mentality of the work ethic. An international revolt would have to be targeted against the owners of the multinational corporations. Make it so it’s more uncomfortable for them to kill by neglect than to transform into a post-scarcity economy.”

Do you think electronic democracy could ever work, or would there be too much legalese for citizens to plough through before they could vote?

“US congresspeople don’t have the slightest fucking idea what *they’re* voting for either. They’re all drooling idiots from information overload. I think electronic democracy is of limited value. Things change so fast and are so complex that the governmental solution is to have as few rules as possible and enforce them well. No matter what we do, the increasing chaos wrought by technical revolution is going to be a fucking nightmare unless we eliminate scarcity. To do that, we need to reorganise our systems of economic accounting and value and accelerate the evolution of production technologies, like nanotechnology.”

What about privacy – do you use encryption software?

“Nahhh. I’m a show off. A public loudmouth. Why would I want to encrypt anything? I don’t give a fuck if Mitnick [renowned hacker] is reading my mail.”

Whatever happened to his virtual reality band?

“Mondo Vanilli has become MV Inc – The Artists Formerly Known As Mondo Vanilli. We met Trent Rexznor at a party at the ol’ Sharon Tate death mansion in Beverly Hills in 1993. We gave him a demo tape that he liked and he offered us a record deal. We never completed an agreement but we did get $90,000 to record IOU Babe. Then we were dumped from the record company, along with 50 per cent of their other artists.

The experience was such a bummer. We’re planning to transform ourselves as a Web Event band, doing special multimedia “performances”.

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Next up is Howard Rheingold, one of the most outspoken, famous and prolific members of the digerati. He posts chirpy emails and behaves like a flamboyant, cheerful hippy. One of his daily updates begins: “Hallelujah and shehechiyanu, I’m sitting on the lawn barefoot, laptop atop lap, once again, yeeeeeeHA!” His thoughts on the meaning of life are:  “I don’t know who or what assigned me a planet where the sky is blue and the air is breathable, water is a liquid, food grows on trees, but I want to take the opportunity to say a big Thank You!” Rheingold’s a youthful 49 and has written umpteen books about virtual communities and technology, including the best-sellers Virtual Reality and The Virtual Community. He was a psychology student in the early 70s, but decided to become a writer and started out with a typewriter, “staring at a blank page all day long”. He discovered the Web in 1993 and now writes an internationally-syndicated column, Tomorrow, which has a weekly print readership of tens of millions.

Rheingold’s also on the board of Directors of the highly-regarded on-line community, the WELL, was founding Executive Editor of HotWired, Wired’s on-line publication, and is a leading anti-censorship and privacy activist. But while he promotes the fellowship which can be generated in virtual communities, this doesn’t mean he views the future uncritically through rose-tinted glasses.

“You can’t make a causal connection between the Internet and dislocation in the world,” he says thoughtfully. “But technology has disrupted traditional social organisations in the world over thousands of years and is a contribution to tribal conflict and wars. The concept of a nation state, like Great Britain, holds tribal conflict in check for a while. However, when nations fall apart, as in the case of Yugoslavia, there’s trouble. When traditional ways of living change, a lot of people get angry; they feel they’re losing control of their lives, their families and values. They’d do anything to get back to the `good ol’ days’, and if that means having to kill a million people to do that, they will. This happens.

“The telephone has contributed to this sort of instability. Technology can help us operate in a business and government sense, in smaller units. This breakdown into smaller units could be bloody. In the US, many citizens are armed, and there are lots of nutty cults. So, basically, I’m fearful about what might happen over the next 20 years. If that goes smoothly, the next 50 years could be really interesting.”

He says the Net could become an important “democratising medium”. “If the Net remains free for people to communicate, then it will make a huge difference. But if only a few companies control access to the Internet and censor this information, then we’ve lost an important social opportunity. With the Net, every computer connected up is potentially a printing press, a radio station, a broadcaster. Sure, you don’t have the same power as Murdoch, but we have a voice and now we can talk to each other.”

He says a major problem we have to overcome is our passive habit of being glued to the telly. “The great advantage of television is that it moves people emotionally and lets them see how others live on the other side of the world. The bad aspects are that you can’t talk back to it, and only a small number of people can create ideas which are seen by millions of people sitting silently. Average US households spend about seven hours a day in front of the television set. We’re a nation of zombies. This isn’t healthy, particularly in a political sense. In the US, the money to buy TV time has become the most important part of an election.”

Commenting on a UK politician’s comment that the Internet would “never replace the institution of parliament”, Rheingold says: “Well, that’s alright for him – he can talk to the Prime Minister whenever he wants. To the old guard, wealth and power depends on control of the old forms of media. Anyway, there’s a big difference between voting and communicating. People might just want to use the Net to freely voice their opinions to politicians – to just be heard.”

To promote the democratisation of the Net, Rheingold set up a multi-media content company, Electric Minds Inc, with Yahoo’s founding vice-president of sales and marketing, Randy Haykin, to pioneer the Social Web. It’s a must-visit site if you’re interested in chat and the effects of technology, as it has exemplary walk-through demonstrations of how to use chat rooms and basic netiquette, combined with knowledgeable tips from “old timers”. “Electric Minds blends editorial, business, and design to give a revolutionary approach to integrated content and community,” Rheingold says. “We started this site because we were sick of seeing the mass media portray the Net in the wrong way. They’re not showing the stories of how thousands of people have had their lives enriched.

“The Web should will become more of a social medium, not just a publishing medium. Electric Minds is based on the BBS or Usenet model, instead of chat. And the topics stay up there – they don’t disappear on a daily basis.”

Rheingold is proud of the six months he spent as executive editor of HotWired, which he describes as “pioneering the medium of e-zines”. “It was the first big successful magazine and it created the banner ad. But I wanted it to be less like a daily magazine and more like a community, which is what I’ve done with Electric Minds.

“It’s about people having intelligent conversations about technology and how it affects them. The audience are contributors, and as we interact together, maybe we can create something which eventually turns out to be greater than the sum of its parts. The level of discourse has been high and people are responding well to our model and are treating each other civilly. We have 30,000 registered users from all over the world, including Beijing, Africa and Sydney. Most of the conversations are in English, but there are some in Spanish, Italian and French.”

Rheingold has spent hours on-line over the last 10 years, he has actively helped build and observed close virtual communities. “During the time I’ve been on-line, a couple of friends have announced they’d been diagnosed with cancer or some other illness and were dying,” Rheingold recalls. “And many on-line friends said goodbye and sent messages during their final few months. Some of them visited the person on their deathbed. And sometimes on-line friends have meant that a person has not died alone. I’ve been to three funerals of on-line friends and at each of these the number of people from the virtual community outnumbered the real-life friends. If you’ve ever been to one of these funerals, you’d realise there is a reality to an on-line community. I’ve also been to three weddings of people who’d met on-line. And there are many instances of people who are sick or have lost their jobs and the on-line community passes the hat around, sends money or just keeps you company. There was a teenager who’d been on-line for a while and his mother ran into some financial misfortune and he was unable to go to a good, private school, so there’s some fund-raising going on to help him. That’s ultimately what virtual community is all about – it inspires you to turn the computer off and do something in real life.

“These sorts of friendships are absolutely satisfying. When I started out as a writer in 1982, I didn’t realise my vocation was similar to being in solitary confinement. By getting on to BBSs, I made friends who are just as legitimate as those I’ve made face to face.”

Rheingold says that many of us feel more alienated today in modern society, in contrast to towns where our grandparents may have known their neighbours. “Communicating on-line can offer many people that root feeling of connecting with other people again. The difference between a virtual community and a real-life community is that you can turn your computer off.

“Though, you have to be aware there are limits to communicating via the Net. The main pitfall is that you miss the kinds of nuance and tone of voice used when speaking. This makes it easy to mistake a nice person for someone nasty, and vice-versa.”

Another drawback is that you have to learn how to put up with irritating people who become entrenched community members. “Dealing with difficult people is a learnt skill, and others can help you out. You need to be patient, avoid jumping to conclusions and learn how to moderate your emotional reactions when you’ve had a bad experience.”

Once you’re wired up, jacked in and virtual realitied out, you’re ready to “leave your body to rush into cyberspace”. But here, Rheingold draws the line. “Is this the dawn of the post-human era? I hope not. You shouldn’t be spending too much time staring at the tube – you have to get out in the fresh air and spend some time with your partner and kids. It’s easy to be entranced by the information overload. But we have to learn new coping strategies and discover the point where we need to step back and just turn the damn thing off.”

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Robert Anton Wilson [died 2007] is a famous science fiction and conspiracy author, futurist, standup comic, punk singer and used to be an editor at Playboy.

Blade Runner author Philip K. Dick said: “Wilson managed to reverse every mental polarity in me, as if I had been pulled through infinity. I was astonished and delighted.” Which isn’t surprising. Robert Anton Wilson, 65, is best known as the coauthor, with Robert Shea, of the underground conspiracy classic The Illuminatus! Trilogy, which won the 1986 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award. Otherwise, he’s a humorous philosopher who engages in “Operation Mind Fuck”, a challenging approach that infects all of his diverse projects. Busy Bob is a futurist, author, stand-up comic, who gives seminars at New Age centres and was friends with acid guru Timothy Leary and famous gay author and wife killer William Burroughs. Wilson has made a comedy record (Secrets of Power) and punk rock record (The Chocolate Biscuit Conspiracy). His other writings include Schrodinger’s Cat Trilogy, called “the most scientific of all science fiction novels,” by New Scientist, and several nonfiction works of futurist psychology and guerilla ontology, such as Prometheus Rising and The New Inquisition. His novel Illuminatus! was adapted as a 10-hour science fiction rock epic and performed under the patronage of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at the National Theatre, where Wilson appeared in a brief cameo role. He was also an editor at Playboy magazine .

With such an extensive career to cover, I cut to a few nosy questions.

When did you begin using the Net?

“I started using a computer about 12 years ago. It’s such a great invention and has millions of advantages for writers. I like to play the Japanese game, Go, which arouses my competitive streak, but the machine always beats me. I have a standard setup with a CD-ROM player. I got on the Web three years ago and almost stopped writing for months – I enjoy looking at sites. I don’t experience information overload – it keeps on growing and that’s great. When I’ve finished the conspiracy encyclopedia I’m going to take a month’s break before I start my next book and I’m going to spend the whole time surfing the Net.”

How much time do you spend each week on the Net?

“Maybe an hour a day in researching my next book, an encyclopedia of conspiracy theories. On Sundays I may spend one or two more hours surfing for entertainment. I use email about 20 minutes to an hour a day, keeping up with various business matters and a few friendships with about 10 people who don’t live near me. E-mail means we write more frequently, with the latest joke and new URLs. The rest of a typical computer day is spent writing. In the evenings I look at Seinfeld re-runs and listen to music to rest my eyes.

What are your favourite sites?

“The Sub Genius (http://sunsite.unc.edu/subgenius/) because they change it more often than anybody else I know. I also like to keep in touch with the Republic of Texas (http://www.republic-of-texas.com). The sites I read to keep up with the areas that most interest me are the Institute of General Semantics (http://www.general-semantics.org/ – which advocates “a willingness to continuously test, examine, evaluate, and change our assumptions and behavior based on our observations”), the Fully Informed Jury Association (http://nowscape.com/fija/fija_us.htm ) and Leary.com (http://www.leary.com). Of all the anti-government rebels around, the Republic of Texas has the most intelligent site. The federal government now has almost as much power as Nazi Germany,and it’s all unconstitutional. The latest absurdity is urine testing, in which they pry into the bladder of the citizen. If even one’s bladder is not private property safe from State invasion, the idea of personal liberty has become a cruel joke. Nowadays supreme power has become centralised in the federal government to an extent that almost suggests a totalitarian state.”

Do you think the Net will change the world?

“The Net has realised futurists Marshal Macluhan and Buckie Fuller’s predictions, in the 60s, of a global village. Cyberspace is a global village and I’ve had emails from friends around the world. Not all of Fuller’s predictions were right, though – he forecast a Star Trek-ish transporter by the 1960s, but that hasn’t happened.”

Will intellectual property lose its market value on the Net?

“That worries me, though I also have a successful career as a speaker. I have post-polio syndrome and it’s not too bad now, but cramped airline seats and travel make it worse. Still, I’m in great shape for a 65-year-old. I’m hoping I’ll be able to use video-conferencing for my lectures and still get the fee. Otherwise, the airlines will have to make their chairs more comfortable to compete with conferencing over the Net.”

How did the rumour originate that you are dead and why does it persist?

“It was started by some joker at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1991. It persists because after many people claimed to have seen me and heard me at lectures, the rumour began that the CIA killed and replaced me with a robot or android that imitates my style of thought and speech and I was programmed not to know the difference. Since that cannot be refuted, by definition, I’ve learned to live with the idea. Like Schroedinger’s Cat I’m dead in some eigenstates, alive in others and float in a maybe state for those who’ve read von Neumann.”

What is Timothy Leary doing now?

“He’s in a `maybe’ state. According to the mass media, he had a fight with the cryonics people and his head wasn’t preserved after all. According to the film, “Timothy Leary’s Dead,” his head was preserved — you can see the whole grisly operation on screen. If you believe this, the alleged quarrel with the cryonicists was a mask to prevent the government interfering with Tim’s de-and-re-animation plans. Worse yet, three people have received email from him, or seemingly from him, since his death, and I’m one of them. Mine arrived a month afterwards, from Leary.com, where all his mail used to come from, and he informed me he was `doing fine’ on the other side but it wasn’t what he expected — `too crowded’, he said. There’s a lot of different realities going around these days.”

What was William Burroughs really like?

“In person, he looked like an undertaker. He had a brilliant, intellectual prose style and I was certainly influenced by it.”

What’s the most bizarre conspiracy theory you’ve ever heard?

“My favourite is that Princess Diana was descended from the French dynasty, the Merovingians [supposedly descended from extraterrestials or Jesus] and the Vatican was responsible for her death because it’s trying to wipe out the Merovingians. It’s so absurd.”

Have you ever been surprised by a bizarre consirpacy theory that’s turned out to be true?

“Yes! And it was actually one I made up myself. During the 60s there was a book about the Beatles that claimed they were hypnotising teenagers and convincing them to become Communists. It was ridiculous, so I did a parody of it, claiming that Beethoven was an Illuminati agent. A few years later, I discovered he’d had many Illuminati friends, and the Illuminati had commissioned his first major work, The Emperor Joseph Cantata. There’s no proof that he was an Illuminati member, but he had a lot of dealings with them. It really freaked me out.”

Do you believe in UFOs and the paranormal?

“I’m the American CEO of the CSICON, the Committee for Surrealist Investigation of Claims of the Normal. We hold that nobody can ever produce a person, place or thing that is totally normal in all respects, or even average. Nobody has yet shown us a normal sunset, an average dog, an ordinary Beethoven symphony or anything that doesn’t have something weird and unique about it. The normalists believe in abstract mathematical fictions (spooks.)”

Why have so many people seen UFOs and ghosts since the 1960s?

“The use of recreational drugs during the past three decades has broken down imprinted circuiting and people are perceiving events in new ways. Also, an awful lot of people just want to see a ghost or UFO to brigthen up their lives and make them feel special.”

What really happened at Roswell?

“One of my rules of semantic hygiene is not to have strong opinions on subjects I don’t know a lot about. I admit to skepticism about a lot of the `evidence’ of a crashed spaceship. Just remember that my kind of skepticism does not equal the dogmatic denial of a group like CSICOP (http://www.csicop.org/about/), The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, which claims it encourages the critical investigation of the paranormal from a responsible and scientific point of view.”

You have innumerable different talents – which job do you like best?

“I like having many careers. At one point I was writing for several years and it was like being in solitary confinement. That’s why I like to travel once a month now. Last month I appeared in a German movie, as myself. Variety is important.”

Do you think you’ve ever been investigated by the FBI or CIA?

“Not that I know of. Still, I’ve crossed the Atlantic many times and the State Department has never approached me to do a “little job for the government”.  They often ask tourists to do small jobs, like take a photo of a building. It all seems innocent, but when you have thousands of people doing that, the information adds up. Since I’ve never been asked, I think my file has been marked “untrustworthy”.

You once said: “the greater the willy, the greater the divinity within”. What does this mean?

“This theory came about when I was travelling around Europe and noticed that the more important pagan gods, such as Dionysis, had larger phallusses.

The Catholic Church is greatly influenced by paganism, so I think this means the Pope needs to have a great big willy to be a holy person. That’s why selecting a Pope is such a big secret – they all lay their wangs out on the table. It’s like casting the lead in a porn movie.”

Have your irreverent comments, such as the Papal selection theory, attracted the wrath of many detractors?

“I’m very unpopular with the politically correct. Anyone who’s bigoted or has rigid ideation sets. Racism, violence – I think all of these conditions are due to faulty brain chemistry and will eventually be curable with medication. LSD should be legalised – that’s a promising area of research, particularly in the area of psychology. Unfortunately, it can also be damaging. Patients should be able to make a judgement about medications, involving themselves, a physician and a philosopher in residence.”

You’ve spoken at dozens of New Age conferences. How do they react to your irreverent ideas?

“If you make fun of something you can usually get away with it. I haven’t experienced any overt hostility – a few have walked out with sour looks, but I haven’t been denounced for heresy. Most New Ageists support the exploration of different ideas; they’re not dogmatic.”

What was it like working as an editor at Playboy for six years during the 70s?

“Not as glamorous as everyone thought. The salaries were better than most other publications, though one editor quit to go to Reader’s Digest  because they paid even more. We were invited to Hugh Hefner’s mansion once a week to watch a movie – not porn – and have a great free meal. The bunnies used to be there and a few of the editors had affairs with them, but I didn’t. There certainly weren’t any orgies when I was there, or drugs. After I left, Hefner got busted for drugs, but he never went to jail. It’s only lower-class people who end up in jail. There’s no middle-class people on death row. If you’ve got money you can avoid imprisonment.”

First up is Peter Cochrane who shared his thoughts on why we should insert technology to enhance our “wetware” [brain], silicomorphisation and the importance of instant gratification. His mission is to “boldly go and be first – technologically, managerially and operationally.” This means his job involves trying to “live in the future, at least five years ahead of any other human, and 10 years ahead of most. I’ve occupied this role for many years, using the latest technology emerging from my laboratory and those we collaborate with worldwide.”

Cochrane’s a down-to-earth digital visionary, and since 1993 he has been in charge of 660 staff dedicated to studying future technologies such as speech systems, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, wearable computers and agents. He leads a team which aims to challenge the status quo, generate novel, workable ideas and get there first in a huge foresight shop aimed at predicting the future to ensure BT is never wrong-footed. “We have to find out the implications of new technology before it arrives, so we don’t get caught out by a paradigm change we didn’t see coming,” Cochrane says.

He’s a vivacious 50-year-old professor, with a string of awards, twice as many doctorates as O levels, and has pencilled portraits of his family, screensavers featuring his kids, and a myriad of black box high-tech gadgets that make his office seem like the set design for Star Trek meets The Waltons. There’s an old-fashioned “there are those who make things happen..” motivational plaque on his wall, a Neanderthal skull, a couple of wiry atomic element-type models, a gigantic monitor and a small camera so anyone can phone and see whether he’s busy. This set-up is perfect for a person who envisages a world where you can have your secretary “in your ear”, bionic robots with superior senses and memory, and implants to improve our performance. His first priority is to make technology more user-friendly.

“I’ve been silicomorphised for over 20 years, and I don’t like it,” Cochrane laments. “The screen wears my eyes out. We were designed to be hunter-gatherers, not information processors. One of our primary skills is visual correlation – not gazing at spreadsheets. I’m pushing for voice input; instead of using an archaic keyboard, I’d rather be doing business by talking to a unit strapped to my wrist. The office-you-wear is not far away.”

One of his tools is a program that edits masses of information down to a single page. Then another machine converts this into speech. It can be made to sound like his wife’s voice, but the delivery is monotone. “It’s difficult to put in the emotion and takes about 100 times more computing power, but we’re working on it.”

Other concepts the BT team is looking at involve strapping mini-televisions to your glasses and microphones to your ears so you can communicate virtual reality-style with experts miles away. And they’re putting information on a contact lens. “We can already project a full A4 page into the eye that’s readable, but we’re having a few problems with it,” he concedes. “We’re considering the use of implants. It depends on what’s socially acceptable.”

Hyperactively enthusiastic for someone who’s been at the same company for 23 years, Cochrane works 11-hour days and loves his job. He enjoys conducting experiments on his wife and kids and in social situations to figure out how people interact with technology. “I’ve been blessed with an understanding family,” he acknowledges. A handy tip, he suggests, for emptying an entire railway carriage is to use advanced electronic equipment strapped to your head. “When I do that, everybody leaves. They think I’m strange. It’s a guaranteed way of getting a carriage all to yourself.”

He predicts the future is about doing more with less and achieving more in a given lifetime. “One of our objectives is to do 10 times more. My father had a working life of 100,000 hours. I can do what he did in 10,000 hours and my children will be able to do it in 1000 hours. We have to work in new and dynamic ways. Three years ago I eradicated using paper in my office. Now I write less than five letters a week and respond to 35 to 60 email messages in brief mathematical formulas, such as:

B = OK – do it, but take care. P.

Or the more descriptive:

M+A = I have no idea, but Roger might. P

“Dickensian pleasantries such as `please’ and `thank you’ are dispensed with. This allows me to spend more time talking to people. I reply to 98 per cent of my email within 12 hours and travel overseas with a GSM cellular phone connected to my laptop, screwdrivers, crocodile clips, a set of international connects and a nose for sockets – it’s like travelling with a Boy’s Own Meccano set and it’s inconvenient. I’d rather have body furniture I could quickly put on and go – an office I could wear. If we don’t wrap ourselves around the technology and use it then we’re not going to survive.”

BT has a prototype of a mobile office which looks like a wrist watch on steroids – it has a pop-up screen so you can have video conversations with your boss, a mobile phone, computer and health care system. “A lot of the technology for wearable body furniture is available now. It just needs the integration and marketing to bring it together,” Cochrane says. This probably won’t mean shorter working hours, though. “I don’t think so. It’s in our nature to work. We shouldn’t work harder, just smarter.”

He describes the Internet as an information superfootpath. “Our ability to work from anywhere is constrained by modems. Constructing a national superhighway is entirely down to politics. Hopefully the industry will agree on standards and a global information superhighway will only be a few years away.”

On the educational front, Cochrane says we nearly have all the technology needed to create a new medium for passing on knowledge. “We’re approaching the Superman paradigm where access to his entire history, mother and father was possible with a single crystal in his Fortress of Solitude. Imagine if we had records of the many ideas of Newton and other famous people that never saw the light of day. These stored concepts could be merged with artificial intelligence systems which could look at all of these ideas and coalesce them all in a way that currently escapes us due to our limited human memory,” Cochrane predicts.

But would you choose to be immortal if your soul lived on inside the form of a machine? “It’s more acceptable if you introduce new ideas gradually. For example, after my father died, I asked my mother and wife whether they would want the essence of my father if it was embodied in a machine. They emphatically said `No!’ Later, I asked my wife if she would still love me if I had an artificial heart, limbs, and so on. She said `Yes’. If you have to make a choice between living with an artificial or baboon’s heart or dying, which would you choose? If you’d rather die, then fine – there’s plenty of us who enjoy life.”

And while we’re here, it’s important to be able to make the most of what we’ve got. “It’s vital to design easy-to-use interfaces, otherwise we’ll have a divisive society of information have and have-nots. We need an attractive, iconic interface to entice the computer illiterate.”

If you’d rather join the Luddites and return to subsistence farming, then think again. “What people don’t realise is that if we switched off the telecommunications network we’d all die. The telephone network is now the nervous system of the planet, and computers are the neurons. It’s an integral part of communicating.” And if you’re elderly and can’t get to grips with those darn newfangled contraptions, Cochrane suggests: “Don’t worry – you’re going to die soon.” So is it simply a matter of survival of the fittest? “No – if you can’t keep up, you make friends. You either fight it or join in, there is no escape.”

You’ll also have to keep updating your skills to stay employable. “What we’d like to have is all knowledge in one head, so one person can understand all aspects of a project. But there’s too much information and we might already be breaching the ability of the human mind to cope with the enormous flow of data.

“The entire information base of all knowledge more than doubles every two years, as does the power of computers. It has taken millions of years for people to evolve to our present intellectual peak, and it’s likely that computers will attain a similar standing in less than 100 years. Over a 20 year period, the computer on your desk will be about a million times more powerful. By the year 2015 the supercomputer will arrive that’s equal to our human brain. About 10 years after that, it’ll be on your desk. And about five years after that, it’ll be wearing you. The only reason you take the dog for a walk if because you’re smarter than the dog. The computers will be smarter than us. If we’re going to stay in control, we really have to understand and use this technology and make it more user-friendly.”

But humans still have some superior qualities – Cochrane says we’re better at creative activities, such as dreaming, thinking ahead and abstract ideas. “At the moment, machines don’t commit crimes, rarely make mistakes, are non-emotional, objective, can work 365 days a year and are totally dedicated. They are, or soon will be, smarter than our wetware [brain]. So far, machines have not developed an ability to design and perfect strategies or consider the ethics or morality of their actions.”

He describes a computer as being similar to a human brain without any sensory input. “If we gave a computer a vastly superior sensory system, who knows what sort of discoveries and conclusions it might make?”

His views on artificial intelligence have also changed his ideas about mortality. “I no longer worry about dying, but I do worry about dying before my computer is proud of me. In the future there will be man, woman, and machine. Three slight – or grossly – different ways of thinking. Carbon life with its emotion, uncertainty and analogue processes complemented by the far more deterministic and precise machine. The machine will be able to conceptualise the future by running incredibly complex models to predict the outcome of any action or decision. It’s the ultimate mix = analogue + digital, random + chaotic, intuition + modelling. Perhaps my computer will envy my imagination and intuition.”

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The Extropian Institute has a self-improvement philosophy that depends on future scientific advances. The group started in 1988 when Max More PhD (doctorate in Philosophy) and Tom Morrow [a pseudonym to avoid embarrassment at work] launched a magazine called Extropy. The Extropian Institute was established soon after to provide a networking organisation to bring together the most “creative, forward-thinking intellects from numerous fields to overcome traditional, genetic, biological, and neurological limits.”

The Institute encourages research and projects involving the use of technology to “extend life, augment intelligence, improve rational thinking, fine-tune psychology, move off-planet and develop artificial intelligence”. Extropians often make career choices based on their futuristic philosophy, in areas such as software engineering, neuroscience, aerospace engineering, cryptology, mathematics, philosophy and researching life-extension techniques.

There are about 5,000 Extropians, and a couple of hundred paid-up members. “We mainly appeal to people who think a lot,” says Extropy Institute president Max More, an ex-pat who left the UK for the US because it was “more forward-thinking.” “We don’t focus on brainy people, though we do have a lot of intelligent members. People join from all walks of life – there are two truck drivers on our list. Many members are interested in life extension, and some have had near-death experiences that motivated them to investigate the options.”

The Extropians have been online since 1991. “The Net is a natural medium for easily spreading our ideas. It’s important that we’re able to adapt quickly to change and our network helps us do this. The Web site outlines our main principles and we have an email list to discuss issues.”

More is the organisation’s only full-time worker, and he tries to raise funds to support research that promotes Extropian aims. “We need wealthy benefactors. I’ve approached the Rockefeller foundation and Bill Gates, because he’s interested in nanotechnology.”

Members do not have to agree with all of the five basic Extropian principles to join. These are: boundless expansion, self-transformation, dynamic optimism, intelligent technology, and spontaneous order. And the mnemonic acronym to help you keep these on the tip of your tongue is “Best do it so!”

Extropians tend to advocate technologies that seem like wacky sci-fi fantasies, and suggest technological solutions to problems  such as space development, memetics, artificial intelligence, and ethical issues about smart drugs. They debate the ethics of whether taking drugs to enhance motivation or intelligence is morally equivalent to taking steroids or getting a facelift? Or should parents or teachers be able to force kids to take smart drugs?

It’s a complex and changing philosophy. “Transhumanism involves learning about and making use of new technologies that can increase our capacities and life expectancy,” More says. “We become transhuman, which is the ultimate state, when we have fully integrated these values into our lives, when we have consciously transformed ourselves ready for the future, rising above outmoded human beliefs and behaviours.” To become transhuman entails a lot of continuing hard work, and part of this plan includes life extension. Many Extropians supplement their diets with vitamins and minerals, such as B vitamins, beta carotene, vitamins C and E, chromium picolinate, zinc, and selenium. Caloric restriction [the 120-year Diet by Roy Walford] is also popular, as there is substantial evidence that it will increase maximum lifespans.

They also exercise, use pharmaceuticals with life-extending effects, and undergo regular laboratory tests of biomarkers of aging.

“We reexamine our assumptions and try to live healthily and improve our intellect,” Max, 32, explains. “I’m eating to develop my strength at the moment, so I have healthy, low-fat food and take vitamins. I do weight training five days a week and often cycle, run and go for hikes. I don’t do a lot of experimental stuff at my age. As I get older I’ll try other approaches.

“I don’t think there’s a division between the brain and body – we aren’t humans waiting to be placed in virtual bodies. That’s a non-Extropian attitude and it’s too passive. People who mainly use their brains and let their bodies atrophy may be on the wrong track. We have to make the best of what we’ve got now, and I’d warn against anyone deciding to pin all their hopes on future medical advances and not bothering to do any exercise now.”

US-based Extropians consider the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to be extremely annoying, because it costs up to $100million and takes 10 to 15 years for a pharmaceutical company to get a drug through the approval process. The company can only recoup this cost if the drug can be patented. There are many drugs which have been available in Europe for years or decades, such as tryptophan, but cannot be patented in the US because the patents have expired, or the drug is a natural compound that cannot be patented.

“We think people should be allowed to make their own choice about whether to take new drugs that have only undergone minimal testing,” More recommends. “The biggest advance in this area is due to AIDS activists who have forced the FDA to approve of experimental drugs quicker. The FDA is biased against innovation and it also overreacts. For example, thalidomide, which was only bad for pregnant women – is an excellent drug for other purposes, but noone’s allowed to take it.”

Extropians are also generally opposed to most governments because of laws that limit the allowable range of experimentation. Politically, they say they agree with a wide range of political leanings, including some libertarians, anarchists, classical liberals, and even political neoconservatives. “The regulation of mind-altering and nootropic drugs is one example of government interference; rigid regulations which forestall experimentation with other forms of economic organisation is another,” More points out. “As an alternative to government, Extropians suggest the concept of privately produced law, which means achieving many of the things that government is supposed to accomplish, only by voluntary means. Many Extropians have their own views, but we advocate political ideas that would allow individual choice and technologies to be developed as quickly as possible. The worst way to manage a complex society is to have centralised governments. You need a few basic rules, such as non-violence, private ownership of resources and voluntary association with any groups, and private law. The core functions of government would be turned over to the free market. Everyone would have to invest in their own pensions, and charities would be privatised. We’d also be in favour of using e-cash in a way that reduces the government’s revenue from taxes. It’s a waste paying bureaucrats. In a free market economy, there would be little poverty,” More says.

And Extropians aren’t keen on environmentalists either. “Radical environmentalists would like to reverse all development and change, thinking that nature as it exists now is the best we can do, and that all changes are bad,” More says. “Some extreme forms of environmentalism claim humans are parasites abusing the earth. For some Extropians, the issue is that the environment is not the only thing we value, and we don’t want to see other things sacrificed at the altar of the environment. In the long run, preserving the environment unaltered may prove to be of less value than some of things we are asked to sacrifice.

“The vanishing ozone layer is more important than global warming, and we should be paying more attention to that. To overcome these sorts of problems we need more technology, not less. Energy-generating methods have gradually become cleaner than when we were burning coal.”

More outlines a plan where the economic rules would be changed so people would absorb the costs of the environment as they use it, and everyone would be paying for water and air. “Factories would buy the right to pollute the air, but not at the expense of everything else. Overall, this sort of scheme should reduce pollution.”

Another area of concern for More is the growing Luddite backlash towards technology. “A trio of US college students, Kirk, Patrick and Sale, are smashing computers on stage to illustrate that technology is bad. And a group of anti-nuclear activists recently protested against the space mission involving the Cassini, which is going to fly by Venus and Saturn and give us some very valuable information. They’re worried about the plutonium onboard. I’m in favour of space exploration because that’s our future.”

While some members are spiritually-inclined, the official Extropian view is that religion stands for “superstition, dogmatism, and resistance to change”. “Much irrationality in the world is related to religion, so we’re somewhat soured against the whole concept. Religions traditionally have provided a sense of meaning and purpose in life, but have also suppressed intelligence and stifled progress. The Extropian philosophy provides an inspiring and uplifting meaning and direction to our lives, while remaining flexible and firmly founded in science, reason, and the search for improvement. The problem with religious faith is that people believe in concepts without any evidence. Any type of faith or dogmatic thinking, including political faith, that isn’t based on reason is bad because it can lead to murder.”

Extropians have their own brand of “dynamic optimism”. “We don’t pray; that’s very passive. Things can be made better and we combat the negative thought that there’s nothing we can do. I’m not saying that everything’s great, but we think about how we can improve things and focus on how, overall, things generally do get better.”

The main problems that still concern him are a ready supply of energy and the number of nuclear and biological weapons being developed or acquired by fundamentalist countries. So what can he do about these major dilemmas? “By staying dynamically optimistic we continue to do our best, assist in lots more research and keep learning,” More says.

If Extropians ruled the world then women, minority racial groups, and people of `nonstandard’ sexual preferences wouldn’t be given preferential treatment. “Selection” would be encouraged so progress could occur. The Institute also opposes the redistribution of wealth through forcible taxation, supports employers’ rights to hire whomever they choose and affirms the right of every person to freely choose with whom they associate.

“Employers should be free to indulge their prejudices. You should be allowed to be stupid and irrational if you want to be,” More says. But what about discrimination based on gender and race? “It will become absurd to think in those terms because in the future these factors won’t be significant. Certain groups don’t do well now because of the government’s failure to provide them with a good education. The government is good at providing education in wealthy areas, but the market system doesn’t work in poor areas. During the 19th Century the poorest kids in orphanages used to given a more thorough education than kids get today. We should have a tax credit system or vouchers so disadvantaged kids can use the voucher to attend whichever school they want.”

Once you’ve got a great education, you’ll want to stay around as long as you can to get a chance to use it. Many Extropians have arranged for cryonic biostasis in the event of their accidental deanimation. Most members believe that being frozen is the second-worst thing that can happen to you. The very worst is dying without being frozen! While the possibility of being successfully revived from the freezing process is far from a certainty, this small chance is greater than the non-existent chance of revival after cremation or burial.

“We challenge the idea that death is a good thing,” More says. “Noone can guarantee immortality and an indefinite lifespan, but we can perpetually work to improve ourselves. We’d like to try and abolish ageing and degeneration, but not through magical and mystical ideas which don’t meet the standards of scientific rigour. Meditation and positive visualisation can be helpful, and we’re looking forward to genetic engineering and molecular technology bringing improvements. The main reason for being interested in life extension is that it means we get the chance to keep on learning.”

More says that promoting cryogenics now, despite the slim chance of its success, is “not altruistic at all”. “I’m intensely interested in seeing life extension happening in my own time. Many Extropians have signed up to have their whole body cryogenically frozen – it costs $125,000.” The largest and oldest cryogenic company, Alcor, funds your suspension for 150 years, after you’ve taken out a life insurance policy that nominates Alcor as the beneficiary. If your body is unrecoverably mangled when you die, the money then goes to your next named beneficiary. For a cheaper option, you can have a neurosuspension (head only) for $50,000. More explains that someone who dies suddenly of a mutilating injury and isn’t attended to by Alcor representatives for a couple of hours doesn’t have a great chance of being successfully frozen. “The best case scenario is cancer when you have a couple of months or so to make some arrangements. It would be ideal to be frozen before the cancer does too much damage, but we can’t make that choice because the government won’t change the law.”

He doesn’t consider other options, including cloning, as a viable form of immortality. “I’m not into sperm donation. And what’s the point of having a delayed twin of yourself? The signs of progress in the field of cloning are minor, apart from the fact that animal organs could be cloned with human protein for transplants. We’re more interested in genetic engineering for higher intelligence. Why clone when it would be better to spread memes  instead of genes? I’m looking forward to the engineering of our own genes so our faults, such as mental illnesses or susceptibility to get cancer, aren’t passed on to the next generation. It would be great to have kids who are smart in every aspect. But the main problem is that the Government decides what we can do.”

He’s not overly keen on DIY genetic engineering by choosing the sperm of Nobel prize winners, either. “If you can’t use your own sperm, you may want to choose sperm from a person with outstanding achievements. But you have to be wary because Nobel prize winners may be very lousy and much inferior in other important areas.”

What if someone jumps out and shoots you? “Our policy on self-defence means staying alert and not relying on the police to provide protection.”

One of the most unusual ideas mentioned on the Extropian Institute’s Web site is the concept of a Nirvana-Paradise-like state called “The Singularity.” This is supposed to occur when the growth rate of technological progress is at its most rapid and people will somehow ascend to a more sophisticated level of existence. The most common guess is The Singularity will occur around 2035 AD. The strongest argument for the timing is the trend for computers becoming smarter. Others think nanotechnology advances will cause The Singularity. Another factor could be the development of self-replicating machines which would have dramatic economic effects. Not everyone buys this concept, though. ”While other Extropians believe in it, I find it a dubious idea,” More says. “If it ever happens, the way we do things now will affect the direction The Singularity will take us.”

The Internet can offer you a gilt-edged invite and if you turn up early you can leave with a huge party pack of squillions. Amazingly, though, the man who invented the revolutionary software for the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, explained to me why he never made a cent out of his creation. Also, the four self-made Net millionaires I interviewed claimed they’d never planned to amass a fortune. And it seems like they’ve still never learnt how to become shopaholics, choose a personal trainer, colonic irrigator, guru, shrink, astrologer and tennis coach. They never want Nigel Dempster to tell the world about their every playful smirk, glance and scowl. Noone’s even looking at them — they never rate a mention Jennifer’s Diary in Harper’s & Queen. I’d expected to spend a couple of days following each of them around on luxury yachts and Sony jets, but they just sit around in banal offices all day, frantically answering email.

Let’s start with the sob story first. Tim Berners-Lee, 41, is a relatively unknown, modest British man invented the WWW, who’s based at the Laboratory for Computer Science at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Sun Microsystems chief technical officer Eric Schmidt was quoted in The New York Times as saying: “If this were a traditional science, Berners-Lee would win a Nobel Prize. What he’s done is that significant.” So why didn’t he make squillions out of the Web? It’s a question he’s thought about often. “It wouldn’t have worked. The big questions companies were asking me at the time was `How much would it cost us to license it? Or how much for a site per year? $3000?’ Once I’d started charging, no-one would know when I’d stop. So it would have led to other companies building competing systems. If you need seven browsers to read documents, the Web will no longer be the Web. You’d have a scenario where you would have clicked on a Web site and a message would say: `Sorry, can’t read it’. That would have taken us back to the dark ages when a floppy from a PC wouldn’t read on a Mac, and a Wordstar document wouldn’t read in Word Perfect. It’s fine for individuals whose work is going to be transient and who aren’t worried about being read by anyone. But the whole concept of the global Web would have been lost.”

Berners-Lee is still very precious about his creation and actively fights to protect its existence. He is a director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the organisation that sets global standards for the Web, so all the software and hardware interacts smoothly. And it’s an incredibly difficult job, especially when multinational heavyweights, such as Microsoft, IBM, Silicon Graphics and Netscape, are vying to control the Net and set their own technical standards so they can monopolise the market. “It’s difficult because things move very fast. For planning purposes, one Web year equals 2.6 months [a figure he “made up off the top of my head”] and there’s a lot of excitement and money involved. It’s also easy, though, as companies realise they’re in a win-win situation because there are so many new markets.”

Berners-Lee began with a blueblood pedigree in the computer industry. His parents met while designing the UK’s first commercial computer, the Ferranti Mark 1. He says his Dad often recounted a story about how young Tim, 5, used to try to make computers out of cardboard boxes. “It was during the 1950s and Mum and Dad were working on a project at Manchester University. I’d been in to visit Dad at work and I saw the big Ferranti console with a filing cabinet on either side and a big rack in the middle and a clock standing on top of it. When I got home I put together some cardboard boxes in the same arrangement and drew a little clock on it.”

His other favourite playtoys were huge rolls of five-hole computer paper tape. “They were wonderful, enormous reels of 5/8th of an inch-thin tape. You could do lots of things with them – push out the middle of it and make a big tower. Then the tower would collapse, spread everywhere and fill the whole room.”

Inspired by these early cognitive experiences, he later went on to study physics, as a “compromise between maths and engineering”. “I went into the IT industry because that’s where things were happening. But physics was probably an influence on the design of scalable systems, which is what I was interested in.” He graduated from Oxford University in 1976 with 1st class honours in physics, despite being thrown off the Oxford University’s nuclear physics lab’s computer after he’d been red-handedly caught using it for rag week activities. This setback, however, inspired him to cobble together his first computer. “I started with a broken TV I bought for a fiver from a secondhand shop, which could still be used as a monitor. Around the same time, I had a temporary job at a timber yard, and one day I was emptying sawdust into a big skiff, and there was an ancient calculator, with valves, at the bottom of a dustbin. I salvaged the buttons and created a quirky sort of keyboard, covered with Letraset. Then I bought a M6800 microprocessor and paid £13 for a character generator chip. The most important benefit was that it gave me autonomy, and I could work on my own projects.

“In the early days, like many other engineers, I used to skip lunch and lose track of time. When you’re creating something, it can be very addictive. I used to dream a lot and had the desire to make those dreams come true – I think it’s called Attention Deficiency Disorder now.”

He unknowingly took the first steps towards inventing the Web while he was an independent software engineer consultant at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1980. “The idea for the Web gelled in my mind over about 10 years,” he recalls. “I didn’t know it at the time, but later I found out that the idea for something similar was first thought of in 1945 by Vannever Bush, Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development in the US during World War II.” Berners-Lee developed a program called Enquire, a hypertext notebook made for his personal use while he was at CERN so he could keep track of the ways new parts of the system, people and modules were added on and connected. “It was really useful for keeping tabs on all the random associations one comes across in real life and which our brains are supposed to be so good at remembering but sometimes mine wouldn’t. But its main limitation was that I couldn’t access external links. Then I began thinking it would be really neat if everyone used this program so we could all link up.”

The World Wide Web browser made Net access so much easier that by 1993 the number of users increased phenomenally by about 350,000 per cent. As for future developments, Berners-Lee would like to see the Web become more interactive, with tools such as video-conferencing. “I’d like the Web to become universal, like paper, and have the ability to be able to point to absolutely everything.” As for favourite Web sites, one of his favourites demonstrates the fastest way to light a barbecue using three gallons of liquid nitrogen. But Berners-Lee rarely uses the Net for recreation. “I can’t say what my favourite sites are, because then they’ll plaster “Recommended by…’ all over it.”

The main price of fame has been living with the awesome reputation of being a genius. “It’s pretty silly really,” he demurs. “There’s lots of other clever technology and hundreds of geniuses. It’s just that the Web happened to have more impact because it’s global.” Ultimately, Berners-Lee says he never had a sense of destiny about creating an exciting invention which would change our view of the world. “I’ve just always been excited about building things,” he says.

And while Tim’s busily promoting his creation, hundreds of entrepreneurs have made their fortunes by helping us get on to the Web.

The most high-profile UK Net millionaire is Clifford Stanford, managing director and co-founder of Demon UK, which was one of the first companies to offer public Net access way back in 1993, for only £10 a month. He drives a pink Rolls [he did - it was stolen within a week of the .net article coming out, which featured photos of the car]. “Someone must have seen it in the mag and taken a fancy to it,” he spelt out later on. Still, he has plenty of dosh to buy another snazzy set of wheels. Demon’s worth about £26.7 million on paper, and his share is about £14 million. He became interested in computing during the 1970s when he bought a Texas programmable calculator in 1977 and taught himself how to program. Then he traded up to an 8K Commodore PET, decided that computing was more interesting than accountancy and started a programming company. “From 1979 I ran my own company called ImPETus. I’ve always managed to make a good income. I’ve been in the right place at the right time. With Demon, we need the company to get big enough so when everyone else starts up, we can see them off. Now we have about 70 per cent of the market.”

Stanford keeps extremely busy. “I love every minute of work, though sometimes it’s hard to find time to see people. There are about 2000 e-mail messages I have to glance at which takes all of Saturday to catch up on. The main disadvantage is that I don’t have time for my wife and family – I never see people. My mum and sister work for Demon, and we always talk about work when we see each other, because they find it difficult to catch up with me in the office. When I eventually get home at 9pm I start working again on the computer.”

His life’s more hectic now, but have there been any benefits from millionairedom? “I still live in the same flat as I did in the beginning and I still have the same 18 year-old car – a pink Rolls Royce which cost only £9,000 as part of a business deal. It looks wonderful. I’ve always had old cars. I don’t have time for leisure or hobbies, so I like to have a nice car to get me between places. I’m happy because the Internet is my hobby. But other than that, I haven’t seen much of the money. The only ones who have are Grahame Davies and Owen Manderfield, who each got a nice going away present of about £1 million each. Mine’s all on paper. Growth causes most of our problems. All the money I make goes straight back in to keep up with customer demand, and I have to invest heavily. If Demon goes public or when the Internet stops growing, then it’ll be phenomenally profitable. Demon would be very easy to run without the growth. It’s the growth that really hurts.”

And what if he lost it all? “I’d be terribly sad if everything went horribly wrong because I’ve worked very hard. My employees are tremendously loyal and I’d be extremely upset about them losing their jobs. They’ve put in a lot of extra effort.”

Grahame Davies, managing director of Easynet, admits he only took about £850,000 when he left Demon, but he’s been busily increasing his fortune with another Internet access provider, Easynet. He began working as a humble computer operator in 1980, doing day and evening shifts for Unilever Computer Services in Watford. He was on a measly £3,200 a year. “It didn’t seem that bad. I was 19 and had a Commodore PET at home and taught myself how to program,” Davies recalls. He started at Demon with Clifford Stanford and Owen Manderfield in 1985. “In the early days we weren’t working long hours and weren’t making much money. I was on about £12,000 a year. We turned it around in the late 80s and it gave us a reasonable salary. We worked Monday to Friday and hardly ever stayed back late. We’d have occasional days off to play golf. But that all ended from the 1990s onwards and we were very busy. My eldest child was born in March 1993, and when I did tech support I used to have the baby in one hand and the mobile phone in the other. I often got so many calls, I used to hold the screaming baby near the phone and people would say they’d call back later. It was extremely hectic.”

He said Stanford came up with the notion of providing Internet access to the public. “I thought it was a great idea. None of us saw the vast potential – we were dreaming of having about 5,000 users. Within three years there were 45,000. It was a very exciting time. After the first few months we were working seven days a week, from 1993 onwards. We had to do a lot to keep up. I never believed we’d make a lot of money. When we did I was happy. It turned out really well.”

The pace has eased off slightly at Easynet. “I don’t work weekends. I have a long five-day week and work back a couple of evenings. My hours have cut back since leaving Demon.” He said he was philosophical about his settlement when he left Demon. “People said that if I walked away with less than £4 million then I must have been mad. I got about £850,000, which was disappointing, but I have still done far better than I thought I would. And there’s still a lot of money to be made.”

How has it changed his lifestyle? “I drink a bit more wine than I used to. And I don’t have to worry too much about the bank balance. I’ve bought a house in Woodside Park. I treated myself to a good family car and my wife doesn’t have to go out and find a job – she’s bringing up our two children.

“I’ve put a bit of money into Easynet. I’ve never been extravagant. It wasn’t like winning the lottery or having a sudden windfall. The profits were from my hard work, ideas and efforts. Having a lot of money is a big responsibility and I don’t want to blow it too quickly. I’ll see how my new career pans out. If it goes badly, then at least we have a great house.”

The elder statesman of the squillionaires, John Kimberley, is chairman and president of Firefox, which develops Internet access software. He declined to reveal his age, but said he’s been “around for a while”. “I didn’t plan to be a millionaire by the time I was 30 – I wasn’t even sure I’d live until then. I’d always aspired to be successful. It’s all relative – potentially, I’ve made a lot. Firefox is worth about $US30 million and I own about 11 million of the company’s shares. I was a millionaire before Firefox,” he says.

“I can take some of the money, but the rest you can’t, because of stock exchange rules. About 90 per cent of them can’t be sold.”

This West Midlands-based computer software company capitalised at $US120 million (£70.175 million) last year. Now it has overseas offices in the US, South Africa and Korea. By the end of the year, Firefox plans to have operations in Germany, Sweden and Singapore. Since its flotation the company’s share price has increased from $18 to $28, valuing Firefox at $US175 million. About 75 people are employed at its UK offices in Solihull and Luton.

“I have been impoverished in the past, but I’ve also put a lot of money into Firefox, so I’m still in an exposed-risk situation. Originally we’d planned to launch ourselves on the UK stockmarket in 1996, but we just couldn’t hold back any longer. By late 1994, demand for our products was considerably greater than we’d envisaged – but significantly, we felt our products compared very favourably to those of our rivals. The US is our largest marketplace and we’ve readily been welcomed into its entrepreneurial culture.”

He says he spends about 80 per cent of his time away from home and works about 78 hours a week. “That’s a big sacrifice. But when you’re building a global company what can you do? I’m driven to make Firefox a global company. Quite soon the sun will never set on the Firefox empire.”

How has all of this changed his life? “I have an air mile account because I spend a lot of my time flying around. But I never get to use the frequent flyer prizes, because I don’t want to spend my free time doing more flying. Otherwise, I’ve been very boring with my money. I have a BMW, which I bought years ago. I gave my wife a piece of beautiful jewellery from South Africa, when I mixed business and pleasure and treated myself to the South African tour to follow the rugby last year in June. Money doesn’t make happiness, but it does make life more comfortable. I just hope the business provides me with a pension plan and provides for my wife and four kids. I don’t know when I’ll slow down; it depends on how things go. Maybe I’d like to retire early, but not yet.”

Peter Dawe, 41, is now working on several of his own projects, including the Internet Watch Foundation, which is trying to do something about online obscene material. Dawe invested £7,000 to set up Unipalm, a computer-networking company, in 1986. Now his investment is worth around £30 million. He was the chief executive and main shareholder of Unipalm Pipex, a UK Internet access provider, which was bought by US internet provider UUnet. Microsoft owns 15 per cent of UUnet, and Dawe was placed in charge of providing the UK infrastructure in Britain for the Microsoft Network (MSN), which planned to support more than 500,000 British subscribers within 18 months.

A London University graduate with a Bachelor of Science and Statistics, Dawe trained as an accountant before turning to the computer industry. He worked as a programmer, systems analyst, sales rep, technical engineer, computer hardware designer and technical support manager. Dawe was also employed at Cambridge Micro Computers where he designed software to integrate different manufacturers’ printed circuit boards into general purpose UNIX computers.

“When I was 33, I started my business and set out to make £2 million so I wouldn’t have to work anymore. It was going to be my pension plan,” Dawe said. “No-one had heard of the Internet then, but I’ve been involved with it since day one. And I nearly achieved my financial goal within four years. But unfortunately I was unable to convert my position into cash and I failed to come to an agreement with the other shareholders. Now I’ve hit nearly £30 million and I’m still carrying on.”

He works 10-hour days but never on weekends. “During the past eight years, the level of stress has increased. Now I’m responsible for the income of 250 families and I don’t want to screw their lives up. And I’ve steadily put on weight. My sense of humour’s changed too – it’s harder than it used to be. Success tends to breed arrogance. It seems to be a symptom of doing well. I’m frequently apologising for being too arrogant.”

Dawe hasn’t splashed out on extravagant luxury items. “I’m not a hedonistic person. I had a diesel Cavalier until recently when I bought a second-hand Renault. And I took out £500,000 to pay off the mortgage a month ago. I have a house in Cambridge, which I think is a very dry part of the country. It never rains there – well, it never seems to. I have enough money to retire, so that takes some of the pressure off.”

His official one-page corporate biography lists his hobbies as clay pigeon shooting, horse riding and taking his two springer spaniels for walks. “But I hardly have any time to do those sorts of things,” he sniffles.

It’s all too easy, when searching for love online,  to misinterpret the unique quirks of online communication – such as time delays which can be seen as heart-wrenching snubs, or emails which bounce or are lost in the ether forever. Then there’s sexism and homophobia. And the potential problem of travel costs should you want to meet up.

Most dauntingly, you’re faced with the task of selecting the lovely from the lack-lustre, as there are numerous Netties who are quite literarily skillful, but who you really wouldn’t want to be seen cavorting with at Silverfish, amid the cushions, shiatsu massage, and plates of toast. This is impossible to circumvent, because correspondents can be using various personas, email addresses and avatars. There’s no way of knowing, even if you actually meet someone in person.

It’s an ideal Cyrano De Bergerac situation for drop-dead-droolworthy-hunks-to-die-for who can’t spell their own names. Now all they have to do is hire writers to craft the chat up lines and they’re on to a sure thing. It’s only a matter of time before we hear about the first cases of this happening. Actually, I wouldn’t mind doing this myself – for an appropriate fee of course. Anything to help the course of true love.

Personally, I discovered the online world in 1994. I must clarify here that while I fall in love every ten minutes or so, I tumble out of it equally quickly. And so, with every consonant, vowel, and word with French etymology, I stumbled and catapulted, time and again, captured by yet another eloquent phrase or innovative use of punctuation. Contemporary, colloquial or formal, it didn’t matter. I fell in love with every sassy syllable, and replied to typed tidbits in a frenzy of flirtatiousness. Online relationships can quickly become intense – if an emailer was female, I felt like she was instantly my best friend. If male, then I’d invite myself over to his place for dinner. It all seemed quite pleasant, meaningless and ephemeral.

But what about those people who want to get down to the nitty-gritty, have a real-life roll in the hay and get dirt under their fingernails? Yes, I do have a dear friend who was seduced by a cyber-Casanova.  Online courtship is just another medium to spread his roguish charm. Via email (of course!) he wrote:

Cyber-Casanova: I may be a cyber-slut, but I’m pretty discriminating. There is a physical attractiveness threshold which must be reached.

Me: Why bother with cyber-seduction when you consider physical attractiveness as the bottom line?

Cyber-Casanova: You email, they get interested, eventually you meet and check them out, then decide whether to cyber-seduce or just be cyber-friends.

Nothing unexpected here, really. The physical attraction factor was also the first element mentioned by three people I encountered at the launch of a Swiss cybercafe in Geneva. They went to great lengths to emphasise they’d become enamoured of their loved ones In Real Life (IRL) before swapping online slap ’n’ tickle. No-one wanted to be known as a geeky desperado. They also described their relationships as being extremely successful, and gushed on about how the Net had been a crucial element of their wondrously blissful existence.

They all demanded that I withheld their surnames, and had any photographs posed for by models. The first person I honed in on was a tall, blond Norweigian named Jarle. “Do you always ask complete strangers these questions?” he countered, then offered helpfully: “Ask Catherine about it – online sex is how she survives.”

Catherine was a sunny, petite blonde who’d been going out with her Ukrainian boyf since August 1994. He lives in Canada, she lives in Switzerland, and they had been emailing for the past four months.

“Email brings out the courting aspect again,” Catherine sighs. “It’s so much more romantic. He ordered me flowers through the Internet and we write to each other at least five times a week. I visited him in July, but our relationship will be sorely tested, as I won’t see him again until December. I’d rather be together, but there’s so much going on in the two continents. It’s impossible to say what will happen. We’ve set a deadline – 3 August next year – and we will have to decide then about our future together.”

Then there was Penny, a young clerk who told me she’d fallen for her fiance when they began emailing each other in a accounting office. “I thought he was all right, but nothing special. We used to go out together with a group after work. It was weird, because we’d written so much to each other, but the others didn’t really know about it. I would never have asked him out if it hadn’t been for the emails,” Miss Penny said. “The speed is important too. I’d just answer off the top of my head, and I felt that when I read his replies, it was intense – we were more open and less inhibited.”

She refused to divulge the contents of any of the emails.

But back to the voyeuristic Jarle. After listening to everyone else’s stories, he revealed that he had fallen in love with his partner from the US when they had both visited Munich.

“I flooded her with emails for the first five months. We kept in touch for a year. She didn’t want to move to Norway, and I didn’t want to live in the US, so we made a compromise and both moved to the South of France. Now we’re happily unmarried with two kids. Without the initial six months of email contact, there would have been no relationship and no kids.”

He said a big advantage of online courtship is that the person can answer at any time. “Email’s a little less personal than the phone, but more personal than fax.”

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Dating agencies

Ever wondered what type of person entrusts their computer to play cupid? I composed an ad and whisked it off to the Lovemaster at http://www.findlove.com.

To: Lovemaster

Subject: Ad

Hi, I’m a sassy, bubbly ABBA fan, strawberry blonde with blue eyes, looking for an embittered, cynical man. Warped outlook essential – preferably beyond redemption.

Within a couple of minutes a message bounced back:

From: Lovemaster

Subject: RE> Ad

Topic: Women looking for men. This message is a confirmation of your recent posting into ‘Rencontres’, the Net’s coolest dating agency. This mail has been sent to you to let you know the precise content of the posting, as sometimes such ads are submitted as jokes from ‘friends’.

For any request please reply to this message and keep its content so we have a precise reference.

Rgrds,

LoveMaster

Over the next week I get a sample of various outpourings from a range of honourable, horny, and honest-sounding men.

I am an Irish lad, living in the London area – I’m just pushing 27, and I’m a 6’3″ tall rugby player, which I think qualifies me as having a warped outlook on life don’t you think?

I have short, dark hair, blue eyes, and a nice smile, or so I’m told, and determined to find the perfect woman before I retire. I’m not afraid to splurge, but there’s always so much month left at the end of my money.

Apart from that, I am really a very caring and gentle sort of fella – the original Gentle Giant, who has a love of chocolate, white wine, and spending wet Saturday mornings in bed (preferably with someone to keep me warm). I love the cinema, theatre, music (Blues & Irish mostly), reading and good food.

Bigfoot

He sounds alright, so I ask him whether he’s replied to a dating agency ad before.

Bigfoot: Well, my philosophy in life is that somewhere out there the perfect woman is waiting for me, and sooner or later I am going to meet her – therefore, I never miss an opportunity to meet someone who might just fit the bill. They probably won’t, but at least I will have had a few fun times. Once I met a girl earlier this year the same way – we were not really very well suited, but we both had an enjoyable evening.

Me: How did you get the nickname Bigfoot?

Bigfoot: I have big feet! Physically, I need a size 14 shoe – it’s a real pain in the arse, as shoe shops only go up to size 12.

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I don’t like big feet. Next.

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My name’s Gary, I’m a 28-year-old just about to move from Nottingham to sunny London. I’ve never answered an ad like this before in my life (I’m a clean living infonaut, no cyberwhore) and am not sure why I’m doing this now but…I have!

Oh well. Anyway, if you fancy some chatutainment squeeze out an email. Unless you’re some 50-year-old robo trout.

Gary

Me: (Charming!) What do you do for a crust?

Gary: I’m a video games programmer. It all seemed so exciting and glamorous at the time, but now I’m replete with all the concomitant dullness my job entails. Every aunt and uncle has told me “Oooh computers, that’s nice, plenty of money in that, everything’s computers nowadays, I wouldn’t know how to turn one on.” At the moment I’ve got roughly 10 days left to finish off a contract I’ve been working on for the last year. This means 16 hour days in a crummy Croydon office fuelled by caffeine, phenylalanine and MSG. I get free Web relief though. But I’m not some sad vest-wearing bloke forever buying meals for one and desperately keeping an eye out for SWFs with GSOHs. <awkward pause most people indulge in after wondering if they’re acting appropriately>

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The rest of them were an unremarkable assortment – try picking the best from these!

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Tell me more and be clearer and hotter. Love you anyway.

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I’ve never had a really good massage before … you know, one of those deeply relaxing yet wildely stimulating massages with aromatherapy oils … how about a reciprocal arrangement … you rub my back and I’ll rub yours !

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I’m your man, look no further.

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I develop business software tools that produce business software! I’m a 19yo, swm, blue eyes, strong build, well rewarded, cute, blond (curly, lots), passionate…

I was redeemed once but I turned my back and spurned my redeemer. There awaits for me a place in hell. I may seem a bit young for you, but age don’t count online…

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I’m tall and dark and I’m an actuary – it’s someone who …shit, it’s too dull. It’s to do with long term risk & pensions & things.

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More about you? For all I know I could be emailing a psychopathic axe murderer. Now for an ASCCI piccy of me…

.–._.–.

           ( O     O )
           /   . .   \
          .`._______.'.
         /(           )\
       _/  \  \   /  /  \_
    .~   `  \  \ /  /  '   ~.
   {    -.   \  V  /   .-    }
 _ _`.    \  |  |  |  /    .'_ _
 >_       _} |  |  | {_       _<
  /. - ~ ,_-'  .^.  `-_, ~ - .\
          '-'|/   \|`-`

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29, not tall enough, stocky, have been told I’m not bad looking. People keep telling me about this thing called ‘Actual Reality’, so I feel inclined to try it. Likes: confirmed alt.tasteless member, all types of music (especially punk – I took the ideals and left the clothes though). Fairly social, completely unfashionable.

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I’m a good looking young man, 31, blue eyes, black hair, Research Associate at Cambridge University studying spatial physics. Italian native speaker, and very, very sensual. I like restaurants, travel, mountains. Have a look at my home page (including a recent picture), to learn more about me. I’m cool, tolerant, with a GSOH.

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I’m not searching for marriage, but I’d like to meet a new girl and find a new partner. Due to the large number of emails I receive, I can only continue to correspond with you if you are thinking you could get involved in a relationship. I am not looking for a female escort either (I say this because I received this kind of proposition today and I was not interested — I like sex, but only when both partners enjoy it, and she was asking £150 pounds and the hotel fees for her service in London.)

Some of the things I like include my job, restaurants, and travelling to Switzerland. I don’t read that much, except scientific literature (research papers).

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IAM A CUTE KOREAN GUY WITH A WARPED OUTLOOK. EMAIL ME AND LETS HAVE CHAT, YOU SOUN CUTE

PS I HAVE LOADS OF MONEY FOR RIGHT PERSON

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I’m 36, recently separated, and an overweight (cuddly) photographer with a slightly off beat sideline – helicopters. They’ve been described as “my train set”.

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I am a rather surly musician-turned-computer geek from Arizona. I’ll even come over to the UK and visit you. I have the best intentions. Really.

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I can splurge all over you, believe me. Please email me today – I am interested!!

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I’m bitter twisted paranoid and depressive with tendency toward self destruction Loaded bored and ready to spend my vast family estate on anyone who likes ABBA. I’m also tall blond blue eyed and a student Doctor.

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I’m single Management Consultant (so lot’s of money!!). If you feel like responding… you probably wont – no-one ever does!!

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I am looking for someone to talk to. I am 21 years old, might be considered as BIG. I am 5.8ft, very loving, caring, understanding and truthful. You can call me BIG BRAD! I am from three combinations, Italy, U.A.E and Greek.

I will await for your response 24Hours non stop.

WITH MY WARMEST LOVE X X X X X X

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Hi I need a wife. Interested? Come to Texas. I’ll send you a ticket.

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These emails actually continued for the next couple of months, and I had hundreds of responses, including one from a colleague who worked on another magazine within the same building as me.

From: E

Subject: Ahem

My name is Mr E. I’m 24, tall, extremely good-looking, rich and absolutely fascinated by women whose names begin with C.

Perhaps we could meet for a drink sometime?

Of course, if you meet up with any of those prospective dates you found via the online dating agency, I’ll never speak to you again. Our special bond will have been broken… as will my heart…

Yours hopefully,

E.

We ended up getting married in Las Vegas a year later, where I was given away by an Elvis impersonator.

[Update: We got divorced in 2000.]

Falling in love with someone you’ve never met who lives 10,000 miles away, well – that’s pretty freaky, isn’t it? Whatever happened to physical chemistry? Love at first sight? That instant thunderbolt that changes your life forever? How are you going to exchange doleful sweet nothings? Via a crackly time-delayed Net phone? And what are you going to say when your Mum asks: “What’s his name, dear?” “Ummm, 100535436.compuserve.com.” It doesn’t really add up. Which reminds me – there’s no way of eyeing up his car, taste in clothing and abode, so it’s impossible to gauge his bank balance. That’s no way to play safe during these risky times.

Frolicking in the park, gambolling through buttercup-strewn fields… none of these are going to happen without bucketloads of video conferencing gear, batteries and mobile laptops. And then there’s time-zone differences and…

Well, UK student Luke H, 22, emailed me about a competition I was running in .net which had a prize of 50 bottles of Guarana energy pills and gave me a lovelorn reason why he needed them. It started like this:

Subject: Energy pills competition

From: Luke

Date: 23 August

The reason I’ll need the Guarana energy pills is that in a couple of months’ time I’ll be going to New York to visit my IRC* [IRC is Internet Relay Chat - a forum for sending text messages in real time] lover and I shall need to keep the British end up!

“““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““`

I asked a few questions.

27 August

I’m a regular on IRC in the #hottub channel on the Undernet and I got talking to Jane, 30, from New York. She was very depressed in general – she’d been stood up a few times recently and I know how that sort of thing feels so I stayed up every night cheering her up.

We started to get pretty close and soon we were both just using IRC to talk to each other. She sent me a letter and photo of herself so I sent mine too then phoned her. We both liked each other’s voices, looks and definitely personalities so she invited me over.

I’d just quit my job to do resits at Uni so I didn’t have much money but I’ve just enough to get there and back, so I’ve booked a flight over for the week I have off between my resits and the start of the University’s semester.

I’m pretty well known on #hottub. Some people are pretty jealous of us. All of the regulars know, I think, but we’ve now decided to keep the whole thing pretty quiet due to the unwanted hassle we’re getting.

“““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““`

10 September

I’ve been causing so much trouble! I’ve been kicked out of #hottub for fighting with Jane in the open channel and now two of the operators have got it in for me and keep kicking me off and banning me for no reason.

I’ve got quite a following from the #hottub, though, and about 30 regulars are slowly defecting to #kazbar to join me. It was amazing seeing so many people shout at the operators at once.

Jane and I have managed to stop fighting, finally. It is really hard talking over IRC as you can’t see each other and it’s too easy to hurt the other person’s feelings, as we both found out. Plus the fact that half the people she talks to tell her to dump me and half the people I talk to tell me to dump her! The amusing thing is that both sides give the same reason – we’re both too possessive of each other, apparently! Heh heh, it’s an insane world! In fact, no it’s not, if it was I’d fit in perfectly.

“““““““““““““““““““

18 September

You’re not going to believe this but I decided to go early. I got back from New York on Sunday. Did my knee in climbing the Statue of Liberty. It was quite a tearful farewell but she’s coming here just after Xmas.

We hit it off from the start. It was as if we’d known each other for ages and we should be getting married next year. I didn’t want to rush things so we’re almost engaged (I couldn’t afford a ring), sort of pre-engaged.

Both my parents are in shock, but happy for us. They think it’s quite unusual and can’t understand how we got so close over the Net.

“““““““““““““““`

20 September

Both Jane and I are really stressed out. She was supposed to be coming here for Xmas but neither of us can afford the flight. The cheapest one is £411 pounds! It’s ridiculous how expensive it is to fly at Xmas.

““““““““““““““`

23 September

Jane and I had a bit of a falling out last night as I was jokingly flirting with another woman. She was married and her husband was there and they didn’t think I did anything wrong but it took over an hour to get Jane talking again. I think she’s OK now but she’s begging me to get her ticket to England booked.

““““““““““““““““““““

26 September

Jane and I have finally managed to get a flight to England we can afford so she can be here around Christmas time.

The only problem with that is I have to drive to Heathrow at 1am on 26 December, so I can’t have a single drink of Christmas day.

““““““““““““

24 October

We’ve almost stopped arguing now. The stress of talking to each other over the Net is what’s causing it I hope, because we were fine in real life. By the way, I was sent a present from another woman in the US that I met over IRC! She’s an artist and sculpted some models of a cactus and an angel. Very good detail. She may be coming over to visit me next year but she’s married so it is perfectly platonic.

I’ve started my own channel and it’s already quite popular. It’s called #hotpub. I think this computer stuff is finally driving me insane.

“““““““““““““`

——————————

11 November

Things have been hell recently.

Jane told me last Wednesday that she only loves me as a friend now and has found someone else on IRC. They have only talked but he told me she is going to refund my tickets to England and use that to pay for her to go to see him instead.

She denies this but admits she was thinking about visiting him instead of me.

Since she told me this I’ve not slept and I’ve only eaten one meal. So far, that’s five sleepless nights. Plus I got the phone bill. I’m a student on £10 a week plus £20 for food and I’ve got a phone bill of £280. Luckily I had £190 put aside, but it’s still a lot. In one week life has turned to hell. Jane hasn’t even given me a reason why she doesn’t love me like she did. She can’t think of one and admits that.

If I don’t get the tickets back it means that I am going to spend Xmas and New Year alone while she spends my Xmas present (the tickets were a present to me from my parents for Xmas and they are going away then too, leaving me here alone)

Sounds fun eh?

Anyways, Jane is emailing me tonight to give me her answer on whether or not she’ll still come as a friend but she says there’s no chance of being my girlfriend.

I’m such a mess because Jane was my first real girlfriend (I tend to be VERY choosy, and alone because of it) and I’m not coping too well right now. I’m even thinking of getting a student loan and visiting a very close friend from IRC (she invited me to live with her! The only problem is that she’s married, but separated, and is 20 years older than me).

“““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““

Behind the screens

So what went wrong? Is Jane visiting now, or what? We rang Luke after he’d endured a week of heartbreak. He has been having a run of bad luck lately – within the past four months he’s had his car stolen and three loved ones have died. “I wasn’t able to talk about it before. It’s too painful, “ he says. “I think she’s coming over. She’s not spending the money on visiting that other bloke; he’d just made that up.”

He describes what happened during his visit: “I went over a couple of months early, in September, as I felt I couldn’t wait any longer. We’d decided before that we’d hug when we first met. I could hardly recognise her – she looked completely different from the photo she sent me. She seemed shorter and her hair was a darker colour.”

After the first couple of hours, Luke says they felt relaxed and “everything went really well”. Despite having volunteered to stay in a motel, Jane said he could stay at her place. Surprisingly, Luke says this made him feel nervous. “I felt worried about her safety in the future – would she ask other IRC friends to stay? It seems a bit risky.”

He’d only been there for four days, however, when Jane proposed as they were returning from a pleasant evening out on the town.

“I said, `No, maybe in the future. But definitely not until we’d lived together for a while first.’ She thought it was fate that we’d met, but I don’t believe in fate. Now she’s sure she made a mistake.”

Things got worse when he returned home. “After I’d visited she acted like a different person altogether and kept shouting at me on IRC and flirting with everyone. We started having lots of arguments – I’m a Taurean and she’s a Leo, so they’re signs that tend to have short fuses – and it’s hard to makeup on-line, because you can’t see the other person’s facial expressions and calm down if you’ve said too much. She has also been under a lot of stress lately at the car insurance firm where she works.”

Meanwhile, friends were e-mailing Luke and telling him to dump Jane, because whenever he chatted on IRC to another woman, she’d leap in and start shouting: `WHAT ARE YOU DOING?` But how anyone be sure you’re chatting to another woman on-line? “Usually you can tell by their language,” Luke says. “Men tend to be more abrupt.”

There was some game-playing shenanigans, too. “She gave me what she called a Classic Test in November, when she told me she’d have a bloke she’d met on IRC, but never in person, staying at her house. He’d be sleeping on the couch. I wasn’t happy about it, because it’s a one-room flat, but I trust her, so I said alright. Her friends said my reservations about this arrangement meant I was too possessive.”

IRC enemies also sent Jane faked logs of IRC chats, which described her as being fat and “crap in bed”. “One of my friends won’t even chat with me now,” says Luke. “She just shouts, `Leave me alone, you scare me,’ and puts me on /ignore!”

Surely these incidents would turn a sensitive young man away from the Net for life? “I’ve lost one an a half stone in the last two weeks, since we split up. I’ve been in a right state. But I’m addicted to IRC. I only log on for two hours a day, but I have to chat. If my parents see me using the computer, they say, `You’re on that thing again!’ They don’t want another huge phone bill. But I’ve already made two one-hour calls to Jane. I won’t do that again – she can ring me.

“Sometimes I think I’m just stupid. I tend to go for what I can’t have and am very unlucky in love. She was my first girlfriend, and I can’t believe she’s treated me like this.”

“““““““““““““`

21 November

Just to let you know it’s definitely over between Jane and I. She netsexed [this is where both parties describe having on-line sex together while they both masturbate] another girl and bloke at the same time and when I sent her an email saying that I’d stick with her even though everyone’s laughing at her now, she told me to go away. As soon as I get my tickets back from her I don’t even want to see her again!”

I rang Luke’s Mum and asked what she thought about her son’s modern form of courtship and its heartbreaking ending. “It seemed a bit strange at first,” she says. “In my day, we used to hang out at the fish and chip shop on Saturday nights, and if a boy threw a chip in your direction, it was a sure sign he liked you.” Messy! So how would you explain those greasy stains to your parents…?

“““““““““““““““““

But this story didn’t end there. Six months later I received an irate email from Jane, 30, who’d objected to having her name changed and face blacked out in the article.

“I’ve been a regular in the channel #hottub for almost two years, and I still use it,” Jane wrote. “It’s fun and I have a few friends I communicate with on a regular basis. I met Luke, and he was the sort of person who was moody and self-pitying when no one would talk to him. Because I’m such a good-hearted person, I talked with him. We discovered we had things in common, like the X-Files, our passion for reading, video games and we’re both very stubborn.

“I continued to talk with him on a regular basis. Luke said he had plans to spend a month travelling across the US to visit #hottub pals. I jokingly told him to stop by New York to see me. He said he would, but then ultimately his month long journey turned into a week long stay with me. Which I didn’t mind. We got along great. I had taken a week off from work, using up ALL of my vacation time for Luke.

“I got drunk one night and talked about marriage. But then a couple weeks after he had returned to the UK I realised we didn’t know each other well enough. Then I started to get to know him and thought he was immature, possessive, vindictive and jealous. He constantly flipped out when I talked to other guys. He started to take IRC a little too seriously and was getting drunk on a daily basis and threatening suicide. Some of his #hotpub regulars began drifting off into other channels which upset him greatly. Of course I was always there with a kind word.

“The last straw came when he started sending harassing emails after I called  things off and cancelled my Christmas plans with him. I ultimately agreed to go to England, but just as a friend. I ran into a few problems [Luke claimed these included drink-driving offenses and she had to perform community service] and when the holidays came around I couldn’t get the time off work. So instead I went to New York to visit my family for the weekend. I mailed the airline ticket back Luke had sent me… after he threatened to sue.

“While I was gone, Luke sent me more harassing emails. Despite this, I still occasionally talked with Luke because I felt sorry for him. He had a troubled childhood and is a very lonely individual looking for love. He doesn’t fall in love. He’s in love with the idea of love.”

I asked Jane why she had begun netsexing with other people soon after she’d called off the marriage.

“You don’t understand the concept of IRC. It’s all FUN, FUN, FUN. My flirtatious chats sometimes involved netsex, but AFTER Luke and I broke up. And don’t think Luke is Mr Innocent. His crack about netsex being sad made me laugh. He’s had netsex himself, and he’s admitted it, so he’s just as guilty! Of course he didn’t mention the fact he called me every name in the book. Why would I want to go see someone who calls me such filthy names? Since then, we have spoken to one another occasionally on IRC, but that’s as far as it goes.”

But Fate is kind…  a couple of months ago Jane met a Canadian bloke at #hottub and now they’re engaged to be married! “So I didn’t feel burnt by my previous IRC experience at all…”

““““““““““““““““““““““““`

Michael and Huw also contacted me with their lusty and poignant stories.

“Some years ago, at the same company I work today, I started a little flirting using the company email with a female colleague at one of our remote sites,” Michael explained. “It developed into the equivalent of heavy petting, discussions of my fetish for redheads and lack of underwear, her passion for oral stimulation, and a few exchanges of intimate fantasies which led to some mutually satisfying meetings!

“We are still good friends, though we’re no longer intimate, but getting those emails certainly set my pulse racing and in need of a little ‘personal relief’.

“Another girl I was having an email flirtation with at work ended in a bust up with her boyfriend when he discovered printouts of our conversations in her car, which was most unfortunate.”

Huw gamely engaged in the role-playing fantasy world of CompuServe’s CB Simulator. “My first encounter was a brief but passionate affair,” Huw said. “The lady, `Guinevere’, claimed she had long golden hair, slender arms, endless legs and pert peaches, and after some coaxing weepily explained that she’d been imprisoned in a fortress by an evil tyrant. Being new to the game, I was a little confused, but claimed to be a knight. My call-name hastily changed from Jackal to Lancelot. We exchanged some pleasantries and then I found myself courting her with abandon, proclaiming my love and babbling cocktails of poetry and great rock anthems. Lyrics by Dr Hook were weaved into catchy bits from Eliot and Keats. My mind performed incredible tricks, conjuring the dazzling Guinevere before me so I could almost smell her scented skin. I truly felt as though we were lovers during our brief time together. She whispered sweet nothings and more substantial promises to boot. It didn’t take me long to realise that she wasn’t very much of a lady, nor the blushing virgin she swore. After five minutes I was the one who was blushing as she eloquently peeled off my glistening armour and jumped me in the most breathtaking detail.

“In the aftermath, when the rampant Guinevere ‘vanished into the dawn’ as she put it, I sat dazed, wondering what had hit me.

“I mannishly resolved to forget her and logged back onto the chat-line. Within minutes I was in conversation with an upper-crust Countess from Transylvania who again claimed to be more beautiful than Aphrodite. After a staccato inquiry over my age and height, she asked me whether I was a stable-boy. I indignantly informed her that I was a villainous duke from Austria and she cut me off without a farewell. Even my belated claim that I was indeed a stable-boy couldn’t win her back.

“The next in line was Sasha, who after three minutes metamorphosised from blonde nymphette to a 44-year-old man in leather cap. I hastily retreated, cutting my losses.”

But Huw was hooked, and within a week says he was the “self-proclaimed Tom Jones of the Cyber-Bonk Simulator”. After innumerable one-hour stands, he developed a “deeper” experience with Kala, 22, blond, beautiful, etc, who playing the role of a confectionery saleswoman from Leningrad who spoke like the bonneted women in ‘Pride and Prejudice’. “I courted her patiently, bizarrely talking architecture and of a certain bar in Munich we both knew – I lied to make our meeting seem more special,” Huw recalled. “The reward for this was the promise of another meeting the following day. I have to admit I treated this rendezvous with all the seriousness of a proper date, except I didn’t bother showering or cleaning my teeth. Nevertheless I felt the same anticipation and misgivings. Would she turn up? What would we talk about? Would we get on? Thankfully we did, and met again, and again. After maybe a month she talked of engagement, and the week after that I gave her a cyber-ring. Kala was delighted and became more amorous. A fortnight later we married in the presence of on-line witnesses. And just over a week ago my first son was born – a blue-eyed angel by all accounts, and now Kala’s talking about having a daughter. Of course they don’t exist, but it’s amazing what your imagination can do.

“I don’t feel more responsible now that I’m a cyber-father. Cyberdating carries a lot of the excitement and passion of the real thing, but at least there are no hungry mouths to feed at the end of the day.”

““““““““““““““““““

I personally experienced heartbreak via the Net in 1995 and I was completely pitiful, wearisome and lamentable. This incident occurred during the UK summer party season, so I was endlessly moaning: “My boyf dumped me by e-mail,” loudly at every gathering, and it was a sure conversation stopper. Guaranteed to grab me attention and ensured I was doused with champagne-bucketfuls of sympathy.

The question everyone inevitably asks after you’ve made such an announcement, is: “How long had you been going out together?” Four years and two months. Not that anyone’s counting. Well, I was, as his previous girlf had gone out with him for five years, and I’d been hoping to break that record. Short by only 10 months.

It was all my fault, though. I was itching to travel overseas. He was going to wait, sulking around listening to Leonard Cohen, and keeping the home fires burning. Suffice to say that my primary motivation for buying my computer was to keep in touch with my loved one.

So what is it like being dumped on-line? Well, let me explain, that I wasn’t actually cruelly dumped, it was mutual. Please, quell your scepticism. It only took a couple of months for things to go horribly wrong. Events came to a head when my ex was supposed to move to London too, as planned, after six months. OK, I’m mind-reading now, but I think he was mortified that I hadn’t already rushed back home. I nearly did, too, because it wasn’t easy after living with him for 18 months – he used to whip up gourmet meals, do the shopping, laundry and take out the garbage. Now I was having to do all of those household chores myself, and I didn’t like it one little bit.

Our relationship suddenly chilled. He left some terse messages on the answering machine. I rang. He rang. There were a few abrupt e-mails, tears and pauses over the keyboard, a couple of thanks-for-the-good-times messages and then, within a week, it was all over.

It may have seemed preferable to have conducted this sort of social transaction over the phone, but these kinds of discussions can only really be done in person, or with a Dear John letter. Let’s face it – if you’ve been going out with someone for years and actually like them, it’s difficult to discuss these matters over a scratchy phone line. I’ve never been able to. There were lots of “ums” and “aahs”, “I dunnos”, and “whatever you want to dos”. Neither of us was fluently forthcoming.

The worst aspect was that I was too embarrassed to share the news of the impending personal disaster with my two friendly flatmates, so I valiantly tried to cope with my misery alone. And I’m a terribly self-pitying martyr. Every evening and morning I’d hastily check my e-mail to see whether there was any update on the state of my love life.

You’d think I’d open any messages from my ex-boyf first, but I didn’t because I dreaded the contents. I’d read the others first, checking out the state of the rest of my world, to see how I’d cope if it was about to cave in. And cave in it did. The fateful e-mail (in response to mine which rambled on about being jaded) began something like: “Well, I suppose that’s it. I’m not really surprised – disappointed, yes, but not surprised. It’s not as though our relationship was all sweetness and light.”

And I’d written (unprofoundly): “Four years and this is it. Just a feeling of resignation and inevitability.” Well, that’s a small summary, but, the rest was endless ramblings about the good and bad times, rant, rant rant.

So there you go. It all seems so cut and dried, and being dumped on-line is particularly frustrating because you can’t convey all of those nuances which can be done so much better in person. For example, I could have tried to lure him back by dressing to perfection in a figure-hugging sheath of silk, faked an air of insouciance and pinned him with my mesmerising eyes. He could have taunted me with an acid rejoinder, and heaved a mock sigh as a tiny ironic smile played about his lips. Even with the most comprehensive smiley dictionary, you couldn’t hope to capture the shades of emotion which are transmitted by body language.

The symptoms of heartbreak are universal, though the only on-line difference is an occasional unreal feeling of whether it even happened at all. I’d been mentally steeled for six months of waiting for my ex-boyf and fending off innumerable advances from highly-sexed single men (which didn’t materialise – hey, I was spending most of my spare time on-line, remember?)

Without a physical confrontation, I sometimes forgot we’d even broken off at all, and occasionally I’d still feel like one of those people who was fortunate enough to have love in their life. Otherwise, I’d plummet into feeling sick and having even more acute insomnia than usual, wondering whether I’d ever recover. To mark my one-week anniversary of being single I stayed up alone on a Saturday night at 2.30am and typed an e-mail announcing the break-up to my on-line acquaintances.

Nothing better to do. And nothing to show for it but a clutchful of tear-stained printouts and a massive BT bill.

This was actually the first case of an Internet widow ever published in the UK, way before News of the World started running a weekly story. And the experience was awful. A woman was heartily sobbing on the phone about how her husband had left her to bring up their two young children after he’d met someone in the US using the Internet. He was addicted to IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and had “discovered all the fun he’d been missing.”

The call had been taken by one of the other staff, then passed over to me, and everyone thought it was a practical joke so they were  laughing. Why did she ask to speak to me? I encourage people to get online.

“Because you mention how great the Internet is, but it’s breaking up families and people should realise it’s not a real form of communicating,” she says, weeping. “It’s all very false. It’s better to communicate verbally with the people who are nearest to you instead of putting too much time into the Internet.” She is incredibly upset and insists on remaining anonymous so our conversation won’t affect her divorce proceedings.

She met her husband at secondary school when she was 15, they’ve been married for 12 years and have a daughter and son, aged three and seven. “The worst thing was that he was using the computer all through the night. Now I know he was chatting to her while I was falling asleep, waiting for him to come to bed.”

She didn’t know when the IRC romance started. “Maybe at the beginning of last year. He has been using the computer for the last two years for work and mentioned her in January. He said she lived in San Francisco, but didn’t tell me much else. I use a computer at work, but we’re not on the Internet, so I couldn’t send her a message. The Internet hasn’t come into my life yet.”

Her 30-year-old husband flew to the US in September last year on business and met up with his new IRC friend. When he returned, he moved out of the family home and “only visited once for Christmas dinner”.

“He phoned me in the UK and said he’d decided he couldn’t stay with the family any more. His new business was taking up a lot of time, but I said he could take whatever time he needed. I wanted our marriage to survive, but he said his new business interests and marriage were not compatible. Other things are more important to him. And now I’m left struggling to pick up the pieces.”

She thinks her husband portrayed himself on the Net as a single, available person. “It seems a bit strange saying that you’ve fallen in love with someone you’ve met through the Internet. It must have an element of illusion.”

Given her experiences, will she be using the Net in the future? “Probably, because of the field I work in, as a librarian. But I won’t use a computer to seek out new friends. I already have friends I can meet up with, who live round this area.”

I found Andrew on the Net in a discussion on-line adultery, and his on-line lover is expecting their first child. “When we ‘met’ we were both in long term relationships which we ended quickly and cleanly,” Andrew recalled. “Read negatively, our partners got dumped by the Net. Or, you could say our relationships were already dead and finding one another gave us the impetus to do what we should have done long before.”

When they first met online, they were both using the Net at home. Liza was studying computing, and she’d bought a PC. She tried to get her husband interested in the Net by getting him an online account, but it didn’t work.

“We met around September 1997 in an IRC channel #Sydney,” Andrew recalls. “It was a crap channel then, and still is, but obviously some sort of luck was on our side. Liza was living about 100 kilometres away in Melbourne and I was in Sydney [Australia]. Our first expression of love happened online after about two weeks, mainly because the basis of our chats was never flirtation, just talking honestly. We chatted for about four to six hours every night from the first night we met. We seemed to understand each other so well and we fell in love, even though that was never our intention. When we realised, it seemed the most natural thing in the world. We worked in the same area and we liked the same sorts of things – except for our musical tastes, which are still at opposite ends of the planet. I tend to move fast or not at all in the real world, so the speed of us falling in love so quickly was no real surprise to me,” Andrew says.

“There was more online chat, phone calls and photo swapping and after about four weeks since we’d first made contact, I flew to Melbourne to meet up in person.” Andrew had been involved in a relationship for five years, and Liza had been married for about four. “No kids were involved, thankfully. That almost definitely would have stopped anything happening,” Andrew affirmed. Neither of their partners was expecting the breakup. “My girlfriend was out of the country, in the UK, at the time. She wasn’t impressed but at least it finished cleanly. Liza’s partner thought he could work it out but that’s because he never understood what she was about. The divorce should be finalised soon.” Andrew’s partner had never used the Net. “Liza’s husband would sometimes be present when we were chatting initially because, at first we weren’t actually flirting, let alone net-sexing.”

Liza didn’t cite the Net as the cause of her divorce. “She can cite her husband as a jerk, but she doesn’t need to because they’ve been separated for two years. I think he intends to play the used and abused jilted lover and bring it up.

“As for online adultery . . . well, it caused paranoia, jokes, and abstinence from using IRC, until we finally settled down and got over it. We rarely go on these days – I tend to use a different nick each time I go on so I don’t form any ‘bonds’. We pretty much gave up on it because there were too many morons to make it worthwhile to look for good people, and besides, we got what we wanted out of IRC!”

Baby pics of Caitlin Leanne (born on November 19), including the early ultrasounds, at http://www.crafti.com.au/~interact/baby.

With on-line romances becoming more common as more people connect to the Net, it’s inevitable we’ll be hearing more heartbroken tales about randy partners involved in illicit cyberspatial affairs. And the usual hurt associated with being dumped for someone else will be exacerbated by knowing the whole sordid saga took place in your own home.

When I rang Relate marriage guidance spokesperson and counsellor Denise Knowles, she’d just finished advising a couple who were coping with the wife’s adulterous Internet affair. “I’d never come across this sort of thing before,” Knowles says. “I learnt quite a bit, but I don’t think I want to be linked in to the Internet. I’m a bit fearful about the obvious abuse that can occur.”

Abuse? “Well, people can sell themselves in a way they haven’t done before, because they can pretend to be something they’re not. This anonymity is very intoxicating, so the Internet can be much more open to abuse than other ways of meeting a partner. Relationships which wouldn’t have developed, because people would have been aware of other aspects of the person’s character, are now going ahead. And some of these people are reinventing themselves solely for the reason of getting their leg over and finding someone.”

She says the newly raised concerns about the Internet are similar to those expressed when dating agencies were introduced. “Some people said dating agencies were exploitative. The Internet’s like anything that’s new – you learn to push the boundaries as far as you can. But this sort of behaviour has to be seen as unacceptable before something will be done about it.”

Referring to the troubled couple, Knowles says both of them used to log on to the Net, but the wife had become attracted to another person “via the written word”. “Then they started meeting and spending weekends together. Her partner knew about this, because they had an open marriage,” Knowles explains. “When everything was finally sorted out, she jacked the other man in and sent a warning out that he was sleeping around with married women.”

Knowles says the term `widows’ is often used when describing partners who aren’t involved in their lover’s time-absorbing leisure pursuits. “The difference with Internet widows is that the partner is actually still in the same house. This is an additional irritant, because the person hasn’t left the house and avoided you – they’re in the same place, flirting with someone else and ignoring you. It’s a constant thorn in your side.

“No-one likes to think their partner is being deceitful, but somehow it seems worse when it’s happening under the same roof. At least when your partner is `working late at the office’ you can feel reassured by an element of doubt. But when this happens right under your nose it can tip the scales. What can you do, short of turning off the computer?”

She says it’s difficult to stop an Internet affair, because computers are often used by both people at home. “You can demand that someone doesn’t see their lover again, but most people feel too guilty about throwing out a computer. Who gets custody of it? What if they’re both addicted? Is it a joint tool? At the end of the day, the computer becomes a focal point for venom and anger.

“There’s no excuse for being completely selfish and locking out everyone else. Of course the person who’s left out will feel miffed when you don’t have time to put up shelves, look after the kids and walk the dog. Addicts take valuable time away from the relationship. You have to talk with your partner and find out what’s so exciting about the Internet and how you can bring excitement back into your relationship.”

She says Internet addicts should also think about the messages they’re giving their children. “You’re saying: `This is how you meet people.’ You could be encouraging your kids to become very articulate on the computer, but they don’t want to go out and meet real people. That’s not much use when they have to defend themselves against the school bully.

“They need skills they can use throughout their entire life. Otherwise they’ll just end up in a bedsit on the dole, playing with the Internet. There is the potential for an enormously high membership of this sort of club of people who haven’t developed sufficient social skills.”

And finally, what about when you’ve left your family and set up house with your new cyberspace lover?

“How are they going to feel about you spending time on the Net in future?,” Knowles asks. “There has to be a lot of trust. You’ve met someone this way before, so what’s to say you won’t do it again? You’d have to be incredibly self-disciplined,” she warns. “And when you communicated on-line, if you got angry you could always switch the machine off. You can’t just switch off a human being.”

If your partner’s a Net addict, Knowles says you don’t have to take your partner’s on-line love affair lying down. Fight back with these tips:

1. Be alert for signs of addiction. “People drift apart very gradually,” Knowles says. “Then one day they wake up and suddenly feel like they have nothing in common. You have to talk openly and honestly about how to overcome the distance.”

2. Get all the important aspects of your lives into perspective. “No-one’s saying you can’t do things you enjoy, but as a partner you have certain responsibilities. If you don’t do these, you have to be prepared for the consequences.”

3. Restrict the number of hours for using the Internet. The time freed up should be spent together. “You can’t devote enormous amounts of time and energy to something and expect the rest of your life to stay the same. It won’t – your relationships will suffer.”

4. Introduce excitement into your relationship by doing new activities. “I don’t mean `excitement’ literally. Just doing things like going for a walk can be helpful,” Knowles advises.

The tempestuous tribulations of on-line lust are chronicled in a book written by middle-aged suburban housewife and mum, Stephanie Fletcher. E-mail: A Love Story diarises the temptation, fall and redemption of Katherine Simmons, the wife of a successful businessman and mother of teenage twin boys who finds salvation in an on-line love affair.

Fletcher has also been lucky. Only two days after her book was published in the US, a New Jersey husband filed for divorce on the grounds that his wife had committed infidelity during dozens of sexually explicit exchanges on America Online. Now they’re both indulging in chicanery, arguing over whether the e-mail messages were “virtual adultery” or “romantic daydreaming”.

The new author was instantly caught up in a frantic whirl of exclusive appearances on US talk shows and quoted as a computer love expert on NBS, CBS, National Radio and in USA Today. Has she ever been tempted to have an on-line dalliance? “No, I’ve been happily married for 19 years. In the case of people who have on-line affairs, I suspect their marriages weren’t in a good condition to start with. They get sucked in because they have problems with their significant relationship, dilemmas over being middle-aged or both.”

She began using the Net four years ago. “I gave my husband some Internet software for Christmas, but he never installed it. I like to browse the Web in the evening.” It can be easy for middle-aged Net users to become addicted, she thinks, particularly if their significant relationship has stagnated. “I’ve seen research that says married couples only speak to each other for about 15 minutes a day. But when you’re on-line, you have someone who hangs on your every word for hours at a time. People who are infatuated can sit at their computer for 10 to 15 hours a day, because it’s so important for them to have someone who’ll listen to them talk and share deep thoughts with.

“I think it’s difficult for some Net users to differentiate the infatuation stage from love. No-one else necessarily knows what’s happening, so it can be incredibly secretive and mysterious. It also seems to be very romantic.”

After listening to numerous traumatic tales as an online agony aunt for an US service provider, Fletcher decided to write a book. “It’s amazing how most of the people wanting to have affairs were middle-aged and married. Also, there were teenagers who despaired of ever finding love. My book is a cautionary, epistolary tale and the first I know of that’s written entirely in the form of e-mail.”

She thinks that three out of four on-line romances will probably have unhappy endings. “It’s too early to tell because people are still in the honeymoon stage during the first couple of years. But most people report that they’re disillusioned by the whole experience.”

On-line love isn’t all that bad, according to psychologist Dr Mark Griffiths, a specialist in technological addictions at Nottingham Trent University. He has only come across a couple of people who have shown the true signs of Internet addiction. “People don’t become addicted to the Internet as a medium – they just use it to fuel other addictions, such as sex addicts or role players who are addicted to escapist games. They pursue these habits on the Internet instead of via another forum.” He says there are many things on the Net that people can use to continue their addictions. “Any activity which offers potential incoming rewards very quickly, such as Instants scratch cards, can be addictive, but the National Lottery is not addictive because you probably won’t get a reward and it’s only held once a week.

“My gut reaction is that IRC and chat lines could be very addictive, and even e-mail. They enable an overweight 18-year-old pimply guy to take on a role as an outgoing whizzkid in a text-based virtual reality on the other side of the world. Someone without many social skills can easily be sucked into excessive use of this type of role-playing because it allows for immersion into an escapist mode and instantaneous rewards.”

Coincidentally, Griffiths says he received a letter that morning from a woman who’d written to tell him that her husband had left her for someone he’d met over the Internet. “He was self-employed and worked from home, using the computer all day. Then he started using chat lines, formed a relationship and left for the US to go and live with another woman,” Griffiths says. “It’s totally weird, but it’s happening. A text-based relationship can obviously be rewarding for some people. I find it quite refreshing and healthy in a way, because it’s breaking down prejudices and you’re not just falling in love with someone’s appearance.”

But what about when they meet in person and discover all of those unattractive and otherwise hidden flaws? “That happens over time in a lot of relationships anyway,” Griffiths says. “On-line love is bizarre, but it’s not necessarily something that’s bad.”

So what’s it like living with an Internet addict? Do they all like Star Trek, The Next Gen, Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5? How many software company T-shirts do they have? Do they play computer games in their spare time? Do they talk about the Internet at parties? And, most importantly, can they cook? I rounded up four candidates.

Ivan Pope, 34, Net guru and director of NetNames, allowed me to speak to his girlfriend, Caroline Chalmers, 31. She spilled the beans on what it’s really like to live with an on-line junkie.

“He’s obsessed with the Internet and spends a lot of hours working back at the office, but I don’t mind at all,” Chalmers, a London-based solicitor, reveals. “I work long hours too, so I don’t sit around wistfully waiting for him to come home.” She says that before Pope began using the Net in 1992, they’d been together for about seven years, so they’d had plenty of time to build a solid relationship.

“Before this, he used to do installation art, because he has a degree in fine art. But the Net’s much more lucrative. Now he’s earning a bit of money, so I think it’s very good,” Chalmers says. “I’d like to learn how to use the Internet, but Ivan hasn’t taught me because he doesn’t think I’ll pick it up quickly enough. We don’t have a computer at home and I might be getting one at work soon, but otherwise I leave the word processing to my secretary. I prefer to use a fountain pen and paper.” Chalmers confesses that all she knows about computers is how to “undo the modem and turn everything off if there’s a thunderstorm.”

She says that Pope has an obsessive personality. “He really gets into whatever he sets his mind to, and he’s spending more time doing this now because he’s setting up a business. I’d expect things to quieten down a bit. I’m not wistful at all at the moment – I’m actually very impressed with what he’s achieved. He’s self-taught and picked it all up himself.”

Strongly denying that Pope is “an anorak”, Chalmers concedes she has seen him wearing T-shirts with software company logos, but adds: “I probably wear some of them too.” He doesn’t play computer games, and is an excellent cook. “He does all the cooking – if I work really late, I have cornflakes, because I can’t cook anything,” Chalmers confesses.

Robert M Toups Jnr, creator of Babes on the Web, had just been dumped when I contacted him in New York. “I never tell women that I design Web pages. At bars when I’m trying to rustle up a sweetheart I tell them I’m director of a college magazine. If they begin to talk about the Internet then I’ll slowly bring up the fact I’m a Web designer. It takes a special woman to understand Babes on the Web without question. Unfortunately, I haven’t found any special women,” Toups says.

“I try to date women with no Net knowledge. I would go nuts if all I talked about was the Internet. I usually talk about publishing, as women are more impressed with the magazine than the whole Web thingy, which is actually how a woman I met at a bar last week described it.”

Maybe Toups’ lack of love is due to the fact he wears corporate T-shirts to bed, particularly those emblazoned with Apple, Adobe and Netscape logos. He also can’t cook, works 14-hour days and is a Star Trek fan. Luckily he’s got Babes on the Web to gawk at during those lonely work-filled evenings.

Dan Blumenfeld, of the infamous Dan’s Gallery of the Grotesque (now closed after continual harassment from pro-censorship activists), is a single but dating man. “In my case, the real `time-sponge’ is being on-call in the hospital all the time, not being on-line,” Blumenfeld divulges. “I’d say my current `obsession’ is with X-Files and, of course, horror and science fiction movies.” Blumenfeld can cook, works long hours (at the hospital) and claims that he “can’t stand computer games”.

So, does he chat about the Internet at parties, or is that a guaranteed conservation killer?

“Well, most of my friends know about the Gallery, so it usually comes up in conversations at parties,” Blumenfeld admits. “But frankly, for many people the Net, and computers in general, are rather boring subjects for discussion, so they’d rather not hear about it all the time.”

Richard Hall, 26, IT manager and director of web design company, Star Interactive, is out there looking for love – when he isn’t on the Net, that is.

“The Net’s the last place on earth I’d try to meet women, because most of the time I think it’d be blokes pretending to be women who are trying to chat you up. Finding love on-line works for some people, but I feel a degree of scepticism – I mean, there’s a lot to be said for atmosphere and spontaneity.”

He says he enjoys using the Internet, but his West London housemates all consider him to be “pretty sad” because he works long hours during the week. Hall admits his first priority is to “get a life”. “I can’t cook – I’m a great fan of Uncle Ben’s. And I don’t wear T-shirts emblazoned with software company logos because they’re a sure geek attractor and you end up talking about software.”

He says his social life actually revolves around people he met on the Net. “I became friends with a bloke on a windsurfing mailing list who lived in New York. When he visited the UK we got on like a house on fire. I’d rather be windsurfing than Websurfing.”