Million Dollar Web Novel

Our creativity appears in knockout websites with ingenious art, animations, audio streams, bee bop text, too cool concepts. We develop strategies for the new industry and educate our clients, friends, our relatives, our enemies, in why to be online. And we make some money - if we get paid a good chunk up front and if we get a good consultant's fee.

But we don't make any real money. The real money, as always, comes from the company that has an IPO if you are a principal investor; then more comes from bogus strategies to introduce new items and raise the value of your stock; and then you sell your company - get rid of your headaches, get solid stock in the company that bought you, and sail a forty foot boat around the world.

Most of us are not in the position described above for these reasons: we are truly creative and have a horrible bias about money; we have no idea of how companies are financed; if we get stock we have little idea of how to make it work for us; and we aren't ruthless enough to make a business plan, stick to it, and reap the benefits.

Most of us little people in new media will jog along with the highs of new technology and small prizes. Meanwhile, millions of dollars sit in front of our faces and we turn the other cheek. Source for millions? Yep, it's True Life New Media.

If you can write, develop content, tell a story, or just observe and record, you can make millions and with much less effort than founding a company. We only need to write down what we experience every day. The stories and the things that happen in the world of new media, the real things, are so bizarre that I've decided fiction was invented to protect us from the truth. Remember, the soon to appear novel The Clutch of Multimedia Gulch will reap $10 million (with movie and satellite rights and rights for media not yet invented) quicker than your favorite Netscape.

Time for some examples:

In a large company with a big production department, a group of producers takes the content given to them and makes it work in their online medium. One day a real tyrant came swashbuckling in to supervise these producers. They all hated him right away and gave him the code name Buddha, so they could say Buddha is really fucked up today and no one would be the wiser. But Buddha's girlfriend, who happens to be an Asian young woman, used to be friends with these other producers before "Buddha" took over. Now when she sees everyone is upset, she says to them 'Be calm, be patient. Buddha says everything in it's own time.' Or 'Don't complain; Buddha says life moves the way it should.' All the non-Buddhist producers are quitting or going to other sites in the company.

A multimedia company had a multimillion dollar owner who decided to fly four of the young men down to his desert ranch. The owner left behind all the illegal Phillipino indentured servants whom he hired to do the programming. They got bused back to their tenement house every night. He had their passports. Meanwhile the four young men go in the owner's small plane to the high desert where they find themselves in a scene out of 'Goldfinger.' From there on you only need Aaron (Spellman) to take notes on the characters and develop the screenplay: the doe-eyed pool boy; the hormone-enhanced wife twenty-five years the junior of the owner; the machiavellian sister; and of course the four terminal testosterone boys from the fledgling multimedia company.

Another story is the failing web-site company in Marin. It's run by a sortof lawyer, an ex-minister, and then comes in a movie biggie. They get a backer who is a cigar smoking dude from Las Vegas. They do some major publicity; get some major clients. The next thing you know this company is sold for $10 million dollars.

Perhaps the best of all is the Nanotechnology Tsar story. A brilliant man decides that the new field of nanotechnology will revolutionize the whole world. With new online technologies he'll build a company that will allow him to have a tiny piece of the action of every nano-deal that comes down the pike. He presents his case to investors as though all this is imminent, which obscures the question of whether it's happening at all. But nanotechnology, when it happens, will also allow endless longevity by repairing tiny cells. The Tsar gloats in his office about deciding to whom he will give the benefits of 'eternal life;' i.e., his employees are working for God. Meanwhile he's made all the arrangements to have his head frozen (Cryogenics) so that if he dies before nano is a household word, he can be revived and rebuilt from the genes in his nose.

Folks, this is a true story. We can't make it up.

And just when I thought I had found a really laid back creative company, I go to a staff meeting. They are discussing integrating virtual reality into their website. But how to avoid the problems of The Breast? What's this? Playboy? Nope. In a VR environment, you pick an 'avatar,' which is a figure or icon or image that represents you and moves around the space and talks for you because you are typing in the words. Someone entered this site's virtual space and assumed the name of The Breast. The person hosting the event was a newbie and screamed for help because he didn't know how to get rid of this huge breast that was dominating the virtual space.