Who at the time when the first waves of the dot.com hype hit the shores of Internet culture would have imagined that this new economy could reproduce a figure of financial scarcity known from the physical world? An Internet beggar!? Was this global network not supposed to overcome such old-fashioned social problems and release us all into an endlessly rich virtuality? Maybe, but the situation is also more intricate than a matter of simple reproduction. The “internet beggar” in this piece by Heath Bunting is smart. He understands the Internet and takes advantage of it, just like the pioneers of the dot.com economy. Squatting the information superhighway, he supposedly earned around 25,000 Euros in the first year of his activity. Moreover, he has survived the bust of the dot.com bubble and continues to work. “Excuse me mister! Could you spare a dollar?”

Image: Heath Bunting