Over the last 12 years the world has seen the general public gradually catch on to what the Internet is good for. It's been a long slow process.

First it was an "Information Superhighway," which most people didn't understand. Nice try, Al.

Then it gradually turned into a giant shopping mall, and then, sort of after the fact, a library. And a few other uses are seeping into the zeitgeist. It's a place to pick up dates; a place to promote your band or sell your band's indie recordings; a place to share photos of that trip to Disneyland with grandma; a place to auction off the old stuff in the attic; Even a place for a sort of public diary and/or soapbox.

The last, frustrating frontier: a place and a tool for distributed collaboration; a lot of people still just don't seem to get that. I first started thinking about it in 1994, as soon as I found out about the web. Well, actually before there was a web, but I won't go into that (early participation in what would become SITO...) And this stuff isn't rocket science. I'm talking about simple shit, like, say you're an artistic collective or a nonprofit of some kind. Wouldn't the web be a good way to make available files that different members might need regularly? Like hi-res versions of the group's logo, or letterhead, or common templates for documents? Oh, yeah! good idea! Never thought of that!

sigh... suspira...