The first World Wide Web boom is over. When the great euphoria was at its height, many hoped the Internet would offer them new freedoms through new forms of communication. It was a hope shared by young companies and cultural initiatives. There was a sprouting of hybrid Internet projects which sought to operate a combined strategy of art and business. In a quest for synergy effects, services were to finance this new presence in and outside the Internet. However, a few Web pages further on, the question now being asked is whether these strategies have proved viable, whether goals have been implemented, and what tactics should be adopted next. The focal issues are the pragmatic dimension of content in the socio-cultural context of an "attention economy" and the ideal of creating independent "tactical" media.
The Internet has offered and still offers many new opportunities to artists, since it is an open environment which lacks classic authorities and government. This has very much changed since public and commercial activities have taken over the old purpose of the Internet. This opening of the Internet has enabled artists to work and present their works freely. Just a few years ago, few artists made their own choice to go on the Internet. Currently, most artists on the Internet are curated by others. The next step for us will be to use the Internet not to present or curate, but to create new works of art. It is difficult for artists to cooperate or collaborate in this field. Artists have lost their art domain to galleries, museums and bureaucrats. Here lies the other opportunity: using the net to create new independent, selfgoverning temporary systems, that we can use for our own purpose, even if nobody wants to take a took at. Artworks that can survive on the net are not depending on one single mind, but have to be widely connected in order to exist. Through a dissatisfaction with the traditional structure and assumed authorithy of cultural publications, both so called 'dead tree' publishers and electronic publishers have tried to incorporate the more dynamic, mixed and unstable social mechanisms of the net. This mixing, filtering and collaborative editing can be seen both as a direct reflection of a shift in critical paradigms of objectivity and a way of probing the inherent qualities of the emerging new media. Yet in the meantime, other distribution channels are tightening up. The UK and international magazine market is stratified in a way that can successfully push alternative or independent titles up against the wall in months if not weeks. The plethora of new titles that do succeed are often predictable and politically conservative. Received wisdom now tells us that only the net offers independent publishers the diversity, connectivity and access to readers they require. But one should still ask, which readers? Where, why and how do cyberspace and paper go their separate ways?