More than any other new media technology, the Internet has represented the idea of change and newness within contemporary culture. A whole new vernacular has developed from its myriad forms that underline its pervasive influence and its normalization in our lives. The computer virus has taken on equivalent status to a flu epidemic in terms of warnings, types of inoculation and preventive care and the dire consequences of infection. Spam, formerly a luncheon meat, is now understood as junk email. Brand names such as E-bay or Amazon, which were non-existent in the early 1990s, now represent types of buying and selling that are engaged in by millions. Perhaps the most interesting neologism to emerge from the Web in the last five years is the verb “to google”. Google, the most popular of search engines to tour the vast terrain of the Web, has become a shorthand abbreviation for doing a web search for some particular fact. People “google” other people to find out how they are represented via the Web in a new variation on the game of six degrees of separation.

Despite this familiarization with the various practices that have developed through the Internet, as a cultural form it is difficult to analyze because of its ubiquity. As briefly discussed in chapter one, the Internet has effectively remediated many forms of communication under its rather large umbrella of activities. Although letter writing has continued, e-mail has to be seen as replacing some of that practice and to have sped up its delivery. Instant messaging, with its whole range of communication abbreviations and emoticons, represents something between real-time dialogue, text conversation and something approaching telephone conversation. Many web pages are designed in the tradition of magazines. Others such as atomfilms.com provide the opportunity to screen short films, while some websites are designed to showcase musical talent or the latest sports results via audio files, video files or both. Layered over many of these sites is pop-up advertising. Indeed, even simple Internet games involve multi-tasking: while playing, one is usually invited to engage in chat with your opponent.