I started a BBS In the mid-80s in Denmark and that grew into a community network for computer developers and users. I came to the USA in the early 90s to work in Silicon Valley, where I became a technical publications manager. In ten years, I've worked at over 25 companies as both a contractor and staff employee, where I've produced dozens of manuals and managed websites, incl. Dialpad.com's website as it grew from one million to ten million users in less than six months.

In the early 90s, I also became the chairman of the NWU's tech writing trade group, which is the only hi-tech union in Silicon Valley. We set up mentoring programs, hands-on courses in HTML at the beginning of the web boom, and quarterly all-day seminars on how to get jobs in technical writing and web writing. In 2000, I led a campaign to restore overtime pay to Silicon Valley workers. I put together a coalition of labor unions, web lists, and others and I was appointed by the California state's labor commission as a commissioner for Silicon Valley. We won, and overtime pay is a reality for tens of thousands of California's workers, incl. technical writers, web content writers, and so on. More at www.andreas.com/faq-overtime.html. At the moment, I'm moving forward with new strategies to change the structure of the labor market in Silicon Valley.

My personal website andreas.com has some 40,000 visitors per month and a monthly newsletter with news and FAQs. It also has a jobs section, with tips on jobs, information, resumes, and so on. It's also the final resting place for the web: www.andreas.com/deadweb (Warning: inappropriate for serious people.)

What's the (near) future? Wireless PDAs, XML, nanotechnology, and biotech. Wireless PDAs are the first new platform in more than twenty years in computering. At only $99 for a Handspring Visor, these are cheap enough to become as common as pocket calculators, yet they have more power than computers from the early 90s. With wireless, PDAs can be linked together into a vast information distribution system, much larger than the web. That bring in the second item: XML, which goes beyond HTML by allowing information to be displayed on any device: web, PDAs, cell phones, wristwatches, and so on. Wireless PDAs and XML may be the next boom.

Be careful what you wish for. Since the advent of the telegraph, the first technological communication system (see http://www.andreas.com/faq-steamnet.html), every technology cycle has been twice as fast and twice as large. Each new cycle builds on the previous cycle. Radio ads were used to sell TVs, TVs ads were used to sell cable, and so on. The web boom lasted a mere five years: 1995-2000. The next cycle may be much bigger than the web boom, and it may take only two years from start to bust. And that's a very scary thought.

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