A unique net has covered the world: 40 million users are already said to be connected to the Internet. On January 5, 1996, the Lycos search engine included 18.053.764 (18 mil­ lions) 90 % of the total of all available home pages. A web of virtually unlimited possibilities, one in which data spiders can frolic in their hunt for bits and bytes. Today virtually every company is represented in the network, and search engines yield results on virtually every topic. Newspapers, magazines, parties - all are online. Every month brings new software designed to make the use of the Internet easier. Cultural pessimists worry that the network will entrap man like a spider's web, rendering him incommunicative and iso­ lated in front of his computer screen - but this is an opinion that we do not share. We see the Internet as an exciting new means of communication. We are consciously not offering free access to the Internet. Instead we will present individual projects that we find especially interesting and which we consider capable of inspiring fruitful discourse about the future development of the medium - which of course does not mean that the works must be successful in every respect. Unlike CD-ROMs, the Net remains a difficult environment for the creation of multimedia projects. Theoretically the same conditions apply (use of images, texts, music, videos, 3D graphics, interactive links, etc.), but long loading times, especially with analog telephone lines, still interfere with the realization of complex projects. Especially important to us is the successful linkage of form and content, a wide variety of possible media, intelligent use of links, and an appropriate attitude toward loading times which acknowledges that a Pentium and ISDN access are not yet worldwide standards. We are intrigued by projects that have high artistic stan­ dards or which provide information that cannot be provided anywhere else. There are some sites devoted primarily to self-reflection on the medium of the Internet that cannot be found in comparable form or with equal up-to-dateness in any magazine or book. Good art projects are rare in the Internet. Many have unin­ teresting designs or are so loaded with megabytes as to be unwieldy. Moreover, getting a comprehensive overview of the Internet is still hard. Despite search engines, research into projects remains difficult and time-consuming. Surfing the net pro­ ves less useful than contact with experts who work in the same field and can offer tips on individual projects. This is paradoxical, contradicting as it does the basic notion of an unimpeded exchange of information across the world in which even the nobodies can offer their own home pages for discovery. Another problem is the growing slowness of the Internet as thenumber of participants grows, especially when one tries to enter at peak times. Frequently all lines of the provider are busy or only a few bytes can be transported per second. It can take forever to download large graphics, sounds, or videos.