I’ve been in love with the internet since my uncle introduced me to it in the 1980s.

He was using things called ‘email’, ‘bulletin boards’ and ‘newsgroups’ as a way of sharing information with other scientists around the world. At the time, I swore to my parents that after I graduated with a degree in journalism, I wouldn’t have to work in an office; instead, I could file stories from anywhere I felt like, a bit like a one-man news wire service.

As for human relationships, distances would matter less if we had the technology to meaningfully interact with other people in real time, regardless of location. Possibly with video phones.

Ha!

What I hadn’t predicted was that by the time I graduated in the mid-90s, the internet would not only help us share more
information, more quickly, it would also help us access – and in some cases, publish – a thing called ‘multimedia’, which in the 80s was a term mostly used to describe the clunky CD-ROMs.

Oh, and who knew that internet tech would make it easier for money to change hands faster than you could say “how much is that hard-to-find limited edition object of desire in the window?”

So, what’s the net for now?

It’s easy to spend plenty of time online; there are millions of lifetimes worth of stuff there already. Some of it’s awesomely good.

Or at least useful. Or thought provoking. (But that doesn’t mean the death of print/television/cinemas – yet.)
It’s also easy to spend plenty of money online. It’s normal, now.

So, given that it’s easy to buy things online, there’s a kind of logic that says it’s easy to make money.
Well, sort of. It depends on what you’re selling. And how you’re doing it.

Right now… I’m looking for Australia’s (mostly) unsung heroes of online.

One-person online shops/galleries (pro blogs too, but the content better be damn good). They need to be making more than enough money to support the owner. They need to have a good story to tell.

I’m back editing Nett Magazine again — can you tell?