Tricks of the Internet Gurus contains a number of interviews by those who best represent what the Internet is and where it is going. Here's a quick rundown of these exciting net.personalities:
Chapter 2: Hyperattentive net.surfer, founder of the Aleph e-mail list, and researcher/compiler of the widely-circulated and regularly-updated net.guide High Weirdness By Email, Mitchell Porter has been described as "Australia's most
dedicated net.activist."
Chapter 3: Patrick Kroupa, also known as "Lord Digital," is a widely respected hacker who first rose to prominence in the computer underground during the early eighties. Patrick eventually burnt out on the hacker lifestyle, an event
that ultimately caused him to question the very meaning of his existence.
Chapter 5: Chief Scientist at First Virtual Holdings, Inc., Nathaniel Borenstein is a world-reknowned doctor of computer science and a veritable legend of the online world. His most famous work is undoubtably MIME, the Internet standard format
for interoperable multimedia data.
Chapter 9: "Kibo," the net.persona of graphic artist and ontological guerilla James Parry, is a virtual god to many Usenet users, who read of his exploits (or just hang out with him) in any of the several newsgroups devoted to
discussion of the man, the myth, and whatever other weird thoughts pop into their peculiar little heads.
Chapter 12: Paco Xander Nathan, also known as pacoid@io.com, is a programmer, writer, lecturer, and exemplary entrepreneur from 15 minutes into the future. He is perhaps best and most widely known as the cofounder of FringeWare Inc., a decidedly
alternative hardware/software vendor and publishing company that does a majority of its business online.
Chapter 16: Fred Barrie and Steven Foster are the creators of Veronica, a powerful Gopher-based program that continually gathers and maintains a list of menu items on all Gopher servers worldwide.
Chapter 17: As Conferencing Manager for The WELL, Gail Ann Williams is known by thousands of users as <gail>. Reading and posting in dozens of topic categories daily, her job is to help The WELL's Conference "hosts" keep their
users' conversations active and "on thread."
Chapter 19: Janet Murray is the librarian at a comprehensive public high school serving 1,500 students in Portland, Oregon, and SysOp of the HI TECH TOOLS for Librarians BBS (FidoNet 1:105/23). She is also a cofounder of K12Net.