NYT on sleazy side of e-commerce
The New York Times wades into the sleazy side of e-commerce: From Unseemly to Lowbrow, the Web's Real Money Is in the Gutter. "The dot-com bust has left the economy littered with the husks of companies that said they would transform the way that people work, live and play." But the Internet still teems with pornography, spam, penis enlargement systems, 419 letters, pyramid schemes and other assorted swindles and vice-related businesses (no mention of gambling sites, for some reason).
The article quotes Bruce Sterling's concern that the Internet is "debasing itself in front of our eyes.... We will lose the Internet if we don't save it." But it also points out that this phenomenon affects virtually every new communications medium and that plenty of good stuff is thriving on the Internet too. Gary Chapman says, "I am astonished practically every day by something new on the Internet.... At this point, it's almost impossible to characterize what the Internet is like.... [Spam] is an annoyance and something that is a regrettable display of the human tendency to go for the lowest common denominator, but it can't possibly be viewed as representative of the entire Internet." (Thanks, Matt.)
