Personal Intranets for the Truly Self-Absorbed
By Michael Swaine
Last month, I wrote about the Chinese government's decision to embrace the Internet by allowing its citizens to browse in government-censored intranets behind firewalls. While I did wail adequately on the Chinese rulers' predilection for controlling their citizens' speech, I didn't give these honchos sufficient credit for grabbing onto the Next Big Thing. Intranets are decidedly where it's at: the fastest-growing market in the muddle of Internet-spawned markets.
No doubt the communist rulers had read about this in the Economist. What we in the West understand is: It's true, it's pertinent, but it doesn't make intranets sexy.
Now, I'm all for intranets: corporate intranets, academic intranets, community intranets, family intranets, personal intranets, whatever. Probably the personal intranet will be the next Next Big Thing. Yeah, that's it: Webmeisters emailing themselves, accessing themselves, setting up their own private mailing lists and subscribing to them, serving themselves across all protocols, from Gopher to VRML. Watching themselves watching themselves on their Webmeister-cams. Living their own Webmeister lives vicariously, turning reality into virtual reality, virtually entering their empoverished real lives via media-rich vermal walkthroughs and flybys. Setting up their own standards committees with avatars of themselves as all the members. Denying themselves access to restricted sites. Spamming themselves.
