Starting to explore

Having a totally new conceptual model of how the Internet works, I wanted to experiment. Using the green frog approach, I started from scratch: deciding to create an identity for myself. Checking around, I discovered that the cost of registering a domain name varied wildly: from 35 dollars per annum down to free.

Checking this out, I noticed that the full retail price of registering a domain name was thirty five dollars with one of the principal registering services but for a few hundred dollars I could become a subordinate registrar myself and register names for other people at a cost to me of only twenty percent of the full market price.

Click! A little light bulb went off in my head. Here was a product that could be sold which had a 400 percent mark up. It then began to make sense as to why there were so many different prices on offer. There were thousands of people who had paid to become subordinate registers and could make money through registering domain names for other people and charging them for this service at a profit on what they had to pay themselves

I soon discovered that this was a highly competitive market place, with all kinds of tricks involved. People were registering domain names for others very cheaply, even for free as an inducement to getting their business to provide them with Web space, site design or ISP services. Some of these secondary registrars were providing domain names for clients but registering in their own names, forcing the client to deal exclusively through them, or, pay a high fee for name transfer if the client wanted to dispense with their services.

Even more ingenious, some ISPs were giving away free name domain name registration and then providing an auction service for clients to auction the name off. To my chagrin, I found my own name <petersmall.co.uk> had been registered by one of these services as a domain name only a few weeks previous. Perhaps someone is registering the names of all authors in the hope that some of them will want to buy these domain names from them at an auction at sometime in the future?

It then occurred to me that having a domain name <petersmall.something> might be useful to add to the end of my emails, to let recipients know something about me. By checking with one of the sites that tell you if a given domain name is available, I discovered that the address <petersmall.net> was still available. The question then became one of deciding which registrar to use to register the name through.

After making a few inquiries and visiting a number of Web sites I began to formulate a few essential requirements. The domain name would be my permanent IP address, but, it didn't have to be attached to any particular computer. I could choose which computer it referred to and change that computer whenever I wished simply by informing the registrar and the administrators of the computers involved in the transference.

The thought then occurred to me that, if I could move this domain name around, effectively I would have a kind of phantom identity that could be located on any computer in the world. And, wherever this identity is located, any messages directed to this identity could be redirected to wherever I chose.

I then chose a Web hosting service that had a Web administrator I could actually talk to. He advised me that I could simply "park" my domain name on his server and any messages would be directed to wherever I instructed him to redirect them to. This service, including the registration of the domain name in my own name, would cost me no more than ten pounds (fifteen dollars) a year.

At the time I already had a local ISP from whom I was receiving my emails and a Web site located in another country (USA). I then directed the administrator of the Web site where I'd parked my <petersmall.net> domain name to redirect any emails addressed to <anyname@petersmall.net> to my regular e-mail address <peter@genps.demon.co.uk> and redirect any Web reference http://www.petersmall.net to my established Web site at http://www.avatarnets.com.

It may seem a pointless exercise, but, it completely changed the way I started to think about my presence on the Web. I could have many different personalities all directing messages to where I wanted them to go. I could have several "front doors" to my Web site. It wasn't long before I was thinking in terms of a nebulous system of locations and entry points, allowing all kinds of complex presences to be created on the Web.

This revelation, combined with the previous revelation that messages were stateless, started to excite my imagination. I could have a stateless existence that could take on an infinite number of different configurations. I could exist in many forms and in many places at the same time. I was not committed to or restricted by any particular ISP, hosting service, name or location. The possibilities were endless.

The main advantage that came to mind was that this provided a perfect vehicle for coping with change and uncertainty. By spreading my identity over a number of locations I wouldn't be tied to any particular one. The different parts of my identity could be duplicated on different servers in many different places in the world which would give me total independence to switch and change around at will.

Simply by changing a few links I could reconfigure my identity to choose the servers that were the most useful or efficient. I could collaborate with different people through different parts of this system of identity. This is what I had been looking for, a flexible interface to the Internet that could easily cope with change and uncertainty.

The words of Bill Gates came flooding back to me. Hadn't he discovered a new and novel environment? Hadn't he learned how to use that environment and had built appropriate tools to take full advantage of it. Hadn't those tools been useful to others, who were prepared to pay to gain this same advantage? The possibilities that e-business opportunities might emerge from this new way of looking at the Web then took on a practical reality.