ABSTRACT
Cyberspace appeals to human imagination, and its infinite creative spaces have provided fertile sites for display of ideas, products, entertainment, competition, and the human form itself. By some, it is imagined to be a global village, connecting people and supporting their digitally composed relationships through bits instead of atoms. Other popular media representations, however, construct the Internet as an economic pyramid in which dot-coms fight for viability and eyeballs. Hierarchy in this narrative becomes paramount because a few large companies continue to consolidate Web properties in order to maintain profitability. It is the idea of connectedness versus the idea of capitalism, and some Web sites try to have it both ways. Particularly in the economic survival scenario, advertising and its formulas have been tested and reimagined to serve profitability in a medium that, until the mid-1990s, had little to do with the desire for large-scale, mainstream capitalistic enterprise (Lambiase, 1999).
