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Recently in Salon Technology

Is the Net in your locker room?
Privacy abuses abound on the Internet -- but so far, the government doesn't appear to care.
By Maura Kelly
[11/02/99]

Technology: View from the top
The spam-master
Sunil Paul, CEO of Brightmail, explains what it takes to be a two-time winner in the Internet economy.
By Andrew Leonard
[11/01/99]

Talking 'bout a computer revolution
Speech recognition technology promises to transform how we interact with computers -- or turn us all into mindless gibbering automatons.
By Janelle Brown
[10/29/99]

Cannibal games
William Latham explains why players get to eat their enemies in his new game, Evolva.
By David Wilson
[10/28/99]

Cartoon for coders
"User Friendly" taps the open-source movement's collective funny bone.
By Janelle Brown
[10/27/99]

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Ad copy for the latest Benetton campaign? Sound bites from a Maya Angelou commencement speech? Not quite -- try Internet start-up marketing strategy instead. On Oct. 25, on a Monday morning at midtown Manhattan's Hammerstein Ballroom, such just-do-it bromides bracketed the scene at AltaVista Network's live relaunch. Think out-of-control smoke-up-your-ass hoopla.

On a color-saturated stage reminiscent of an MTV awards telecast, a curly-haired pianist opened the self-tagged "culture-shaping event" by banging out a New-Agey number, which ended just as a blond opera diva, bedecked in a white ballgown and matching fur stole, started tearing into an aria while being lowered to the stage by a hydraulic lift. A sign-language interpreter translated her song for the hard of hearing, which was strange, considering that we hearing-capable folks had no interpreter to translate the song out of Italian for us. Stranger still, the interpreter was nowhere to be found when the tuxedoed Harlem Boys Choir crooned, in English, about "marching to Zion" and the "highway to heaven."

As the reporters in the press box watched with expressions equal parts amazement, embarrassment and pure terror, the choir was followed by the cast of "Stomp," which was followed by a young African-American woman, adrift in a "crowd," on stage, barking out a string of adolescent impressions, each more precious than the next: "Intelligence is the ultimate aphrodisiac," "If men gave birth to children, there would be no more wars," "If a tree falls in the forest, was it cut down needlessly?" and "Your brain weighs 16 pounds. How many ounces did you use today?"

Well I sure didn't use many on that particular morning; in fact, I swore I could feel the cells being sucked right out of my cranium, as I witnessed AltaVista flailing for cultural credibility. But in the increasingly crammed market of seek-and-search-sites -- with companies wedged shoulder to shoulder in the page-view rankings, keen on future IPOs, and flaunting personality-free, visually interchangeable interfaces -- perhaps a little odious self-congratulation is the only way to get any attention these days. So what if engaging in such aggressive marketing for marketing's sake usurps the very smart-alecky, rebel-with-a-cause climate that birthed the Internet? AltaVista certainly isn't alone in attempting to attract attention with a marketing campaign that has all the style and verve of a Dockers ad. Everyone is playing this game, striving to one-up competitors with absurdly ridiculous launch events that cry out desperately for even a smidgen of self-conscious irony. Today's search sites are trying to make the case that their products will make you smarter -- but the tactics they employ only make them look dumb.

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