If you have a moment, own a Mac and use Internet Explorer, then pop on over to Alexander Wilson Studios sometime.
Wilson, a (deep breath, now) singer/songwriter, author, developer, actor and “comic stripper” (get your mind out of the gutter — he draws comics), has created a series of dandy little icons to sit in your Explorer toolbar, and take you to your favourite sites.
There’s icons for everything from Amazon.com to NAACP to National Public Radio to Michael Moore in all their tiny, tasteful RGB glory.
Wilson is a member of a surprisingly large club of people who create stuff and post it online for people like you and me to use for free. Desktop pictures, icons, software — all offered without any apparent ulterior motive except glory.
It’s the same spirit of altruism, community and, okay, obsession that leads people to spend endless hours crafting guides to obscure TV shows and other arcane online resources… arcane, that is, until you need one.
Even where such sites sell banner advertising, the goal is usually to pay some small portion of the costs of running and hosting the site. A very few of them might one day turn a profit, but most webmasters are in it for love of the subject matter and a genuine desire to make a contribution.
It’s a cheery thought in a week when both AOL and Microsoft have unleashed marketing blitzes for their respective very-much-for-profit online services.
Theirs is a mindset where you don’t put a thing online that doesn’t, at the end of the day, enhance shareholder value.
But at least for now, the Net is still a place where social capital is still just as important as the other kind.
