Holding everything back, of course, are the maddening technical constraints. The Internet still can be experienced only through a painfully thin pipeline via machines that can give even a gearhead ulcers. Cable modems may one day bring the Web into your computer at blinding speeds, but now they're in the testing phase. WebTV awkwardly merges the interactivity of the PC with the ease of the beloved idiot box, but only about 415,000 buyers have bit to date, and many industryites now pooh-pooh the notion of convergence. "Doing bills on your TV?" scoffs Forrester's Hardie. "That's hokey s---." The truth remains that the Internet may never truly be a mainstream medium until the day comes when you can simply turn it on.
On the upside, the promise of a Web filled with sound and vision is crawling toward fruition. Thanks to RealNetworks' (formerly Progressive Networks) RealAudio player, the Internet bristles with radio-station feeds and live concerts, and the follow-up RealVideo has met with enough success for the company to announce its own RealNetwork (as opposed to those fake networks on TV, I suppose). Online gaming networks are proliferating and, more important, consolidating, allowing you to vent your Quake bloodlust against someone on the other side of the planet. "Push" programming--which in the hands of its chief purveyor, PointCast, downloads news feeds and weather reports straight to your desktop--may throw more data at you than you'll ever need, but at least the damned thing works. And ambitious webzines like Salon magazine and Fray are finally breaking free of the print model, delivering a browsing experience as unique as their editorial voices.
With the overturning of the Communications Decency Act by the Supreme Court this June, you could practically hear cyberspace breathe a sigh of relief--even as conscientious parents continue to fret over the genuine nastiness that's but a click or two away. With government having stashed the muzzle for the time being, a million websites will continue to bloom. Granted, that's part of the problem, at least if you're foolish enough to actually trust what you read on the Internet. But for every Pierre Salinger gullible enough to believe that a wacko Web page had the Truth about the TWA Flight 800 crash, or Net gossip Matt Drudge sued for running an allegedly libelous statement about a White House aide, there are thousands of surfers who are learning to be rightly wary. These are the growing pains of a medium unlike any other--one that hands the microphone to anyone willing to pick it up. In the process, audiences are learning to take all their information with a healthy grain of salt, and creators are thinking twice about, heaven forbid, responsibility. "I have stayed away from [personal gossip] from the get-go," says Harry Knowles, whose Ain't It Cool News website posts information about upcoming movies that the studios would rather keep quiet. "I think most people would actually prefer to get real information instead of gossip about dirty back lives."
