Kasparov's
one-man
cheering squad

There was a time when drugs, political asylum and arms trafficking were the hot motives in fictional thrillers where the bad guys try to blow up the good guys, detectives piece together the evidence, and turn up with a search warrant. It was, as it were, your basic Tom Clancy plot line.

Today the plot structure hasn't changed much, except for the protagonists with fast modems. Tom Clancy's new geeky, white collar villain has enough knowledge of HTML to be dangerous, but a displays that irritating tendency to hire woman assassins rather than date them. OK, so you've spotted my bias: Bill gates is no Sean Connery. But set in the dark alleys of virtual biker bars, this Internet movie is a good example of why it is difficult to define --or parody-- the Net. I refer to the ABC network premirer "Netforce". This is not the first Internet movie to recognize the dramatic potential of people chasing people using modems rather than Ferraris (where would the Meg Ryan, Tom Hanks movie "You've got mail" be without a 56K connection?), but it may be the first to take the US statement on Cyber-terrorism to its logical conclusion and implicate a software vendor as a dangerous animal. Structuring NetForce as a 2-part special was probably a shrewd marketing tactic to give it seriousness of a docu-drama that meshes well with the recent video-taped investigation by the US Senate investigation of Bill Gates. Now I'm not sure what Mr. Gates might have had to say to Mr. Clancy, but let's put it this way. I wouldn't think it safe to allow them on the same elevator together.

In the movie, a fellow called William Stiles, a thinly disguised Gates, owns a Web browser called the Janus browser, with which he plans to use to dominate the infosphere. Nothing wrong with that so far, right? Your typical Microsoft memo material. But, hey, this is Tom Clancy, not Enid Blyton, so even though the clues lead to a browser, not some sunken treasure, you must believe that the fate of human civilization depends on it. Meaning computers, air travel and blood banks are vulnerable. The plot is simple: Janus Corporation wants to percolate into every crevice of our lives, ("I want to install the new Janus Web browser as an integral part of the operating system at no added cost to the consumer", William Stiles declares to annoyed panel of senators) but needs to steal the special protocols that its creator has entrusted with the President of the United States. And just to make us remember that the political economy of cyberspace is very complicated, we have the Janus people pit their wits against the government Internet swat team, NetForce. But why would the bad guys need to use satellite uplinks to release a bunch of convicts from a maximum security prison? Or fake the death of a former FBI boss? Or break into the Oval Office? It's that powerful browser again, both the instrument and object of corruption and cyber marketing.

People who never realize what goes on in chat rooms, or never dreamt that Web browsing would one day combine virtual reality, have more things to worry about than online communities and cyber-sex. NetForce, for all its hyperbole, gives us a glimpse of why cyberspace will always be an evasive and unruly place. In one chat room, detectives trace the exact location of one occupant using mathematical coordinates from a satellite. But when they storm the house, it is deserted. So much for the trouble of obtaining an 'E-warrant'.

The final showdown is totally unnecessary, but without 007, is somewhat forgivable. Never since Monica Lewinsky, have we seen more security breaches and destruction of the Oval Office. While Bill Gates --oops, Will Stiles-- holds a dinner for the president and the first lady, his undercover team smashes their way into the Oval Office to pinch the Internet protocols held by the president. With cyber-intelligence provided by an Indian software programmer (Clancy maybe the first to create the 'Indian hacker' stereotype, in the slot once occupied by 'Palestinian terrorist' or 'Soviet spy') who jams the White House security system, the break-in is like Watergate --with Pentium backup. Which itself begs the question: If Uday Shankar, the fictional Indian hacker, could engineer a prison break as well as crack into the computers of the national security unit, why bother to crash through the White House gates and physically storm the Oval Office?

You know the answer to that already. Computers are grey and boring, and make poor substitutes for gutsy heroes like Wesley Snipes. Even the most robust Web browser makes a poor villain of the piece. Besides, ones and zeroes, unlike unruly asteroids (Armageddon) and hijacked presidential planes (Air Force One) are not at all photogenic. So until Tom Clancy wannabees figure out a way to make geeks --and their wares-- really menacing, Web sites must do the dirty work. In the movie, we are often not sure if we are seeing the action through a browser window, or experiencing it through the camera lens. Considering how a lot of people today get their news, friends, stock prices and groceries off the Net, the Web site-as-window isn't too different from how life is turning out to be. As Bill Gates and William Stiles would put it, what's the difference?