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A L S O__T O D A Y 21st Log "Nerds 2.0.1": PBS's all-too-brief history of the Internet - - - - - - - - - - T A B L E__T A L K The Microsoft antitrust trial: Discuss events as they unfold in the Digital Culture area of Table Talk - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y Thought-activated computing By Sam Witt and Sean Durkin The brain/computer interface becomes real -- as a boon for the paralyzed (11/23/98) The copyright boomerang By Peter Wayner A new copyright law bans tools that "circumvent" copy protections -- is cutting and pasting illegal? (11/20/98) Court puts new Net censorship rules on hold -- for now By Janelle Brown First ruling in "CDA II" case goes the way of law's opponents (11/20/98) Let's Get This Straight By Scott Rosenberg Windows on the wane? Open source and information appliances squeeze the PC from both sides (11/19/98) The return of the queen of cyberpunk By Andrew Leonard Science fiction novelist Pat Cadigan watches her imagined futures turn real (11/18/98) - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE 21ST FEATURES ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.

Strange _________Webfellows WHAT THE AOL PURCHASE OF NETSCAPE REALLY MEANS: PROVIDING SERVICES TO USERS IS THE NAME OF THE INTERNET GAME. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BY ANDREW LEONARD | Turn the clock back to 1994 -- the year the Web exploded. America Online, which represented everything the Web wasn't -- proprietary, censored and always aiming straight at the mainstream -- just didn't get it. But there was another company that did: Netscape, that hip bunch of computer geeks credited, rightly or wrongly, with making the Web a breakthrough phenomenon. While AOL blundered through one misconceived business deal after another throughout the mid-'90s, Netscape went from one success to another -- the company followed its astonishing seizure of an overwhelmingly dominant market share for the Navigator Web browser with a fantastically profitable Internet public offering. As it released new versions of its software practically on a weekly basis, Netscape came to define the concept of "Internet time." Netscape was the future -- and some hopeful souls, aided and abetted by extravagant proclamations by Netscape executives, even suggested that Netscape might one day supplant Microsoft as the center of the software universe. Today, AOL appears to be on the verge of buying Netscape. It would be awfully easy to view the purchase in 1994 terms -- to see AOL's ascendance as the triumph of the mainstream over the Web, the transformation of everything that was cool into a homogenized corporate mall. But the truth, in 1998, is not that simple. Over the past four years, not only has AOL consistently moved closer to the Web's way of doing things, becoming more open, more freewheeling and more closely identified with the Web, but at the same time, Netscape has been morphing its business model into a decidedly AOL-ish pattern, mainstreaming its Netcenter "portal" into a gateway that attempts to profit off aggregated users. No culture clash here, just a merging of interests. The ultimate significance of an AOL purchase of Netscape could be the recognition that providing services to users is the only thing that counts -- that the money isn't in the browser or the software or even in flat-rate Internet access fees. "It really reflects the way the fault lines are shifting in the computer industry," says Tim O'Reilly, CEO of computer book publisher O'Reilly and Associates. "The Web has become the center of focus. But it's not the advances in Web technology, the browsers and the servers, that are important -- it's the opportunity to sell services to the people on the Web ... AOL wants the eyeballs that Netscape has and they want the ability to point those eyeballs to where they can buy things." "The potential for capturing e-commerce is going to be incredible," says Alex Cohen, a former director of personalization and advertising technology at Netscape, and currently the director of content technology at C-Net. N E X T_ P A G E .|. Trouble for traditional Web values? - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Become a Salon member. Click here.