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Wednesday Dec 06, 2006
Many hands, not pixels, make light work
Alex Tew has done it again - he's captured our imagination. The million dollar money spinner has something about him. Is it his seemingly miraculous ability of conjuring the jackpot from within his computer? Is it the sight of someone so young thumbing his nose to all those oldies who say they know better? Is it the quaintness of hiring his Mum as his personal secretary? Whatever it is- there's something that we find irresistible about this Tew story.
"Alex your tea's on the table... and I've got the world's press on line two shall I tell them to hold?" Visions of turned tables in the Tew household aside, the one enduring vision here is of an inventor's dream: the internet truly is the home of supreme creativity. Not for a generation, has a medium got the grey matter going as has ye olde webbe.
Why then has Tew provoked as much criticism as plaudits? How could we let - dare I say it - envy get the better of us and criticise him? After all, he's achieved a level of financial security in his youth that many of us would find hard to argue with. And the best bit - he's done it using an ordinary computer with an ordinary internet connection (well maybe he had extraordinarily generous friends and family when it came to start up cash). Surely, the message of the Tew story is that there's hope for us all.
Yeh but... let's face it Tew's story's not the real internet miracle- it's the exception and not the rule. The miracle is not that the online world can make one or two of us fabulously rich. The real rule to watch is that the internet is at its most miraculous when money is not even mentioned. Open source software, creative commons and collaborative online ventures have allowed thousands and thousands of people to work together and complement each other. This is the real conjuring trick we should be getting excited about. Early prominent examples such as Wikipedia and Mozilla have shown us the true power of the internet. Here at YouthNet we're pretty taken with how thousands of young people have built and contributed to the archive of information readily available in our discussion boards and askTheSite Q&As.
Information is how the net makes most of us richer and wealthier. Auctioned pixels are for dummies- unless you want to show your mum who's boss.
