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Name: Rosa Entiendo

Age: 35

Job description: Symbolic analyst for Yakomoto Communications

Salary: Ecus 150 000

Lives in: Warsaw, The Kingdom of Poland

Ambition: To be the chief analyst on Developing World Review, or teach
Spanish in Alaska

Day in the life: Early morning and Rosa is at work at the European Analyser.
Everyone gets streamlined news these days: agent-tailored factoids and trend
graphics arrive over their hand-held communicators. But at the top end of
the market there’s a niche for people like Rosa who provide in-depth search
and analysis.

Rosa specialises in biotechnology and starts the day by picking the
items for her pool of customers from Adelaide to Zanzibar. Then the race
is on to commission writers, photographers, digital video operators, musicians
and graphic artists. By the end of the afternoon Rosa has the digital information
in the can and is brainstorming with her programmers and a cognitive psychologist,
who will design the presentation that will enable Rosa’s clients to absorb
it effortlessly.

At the end of the day, it’s an hour in the Mindset bar, or a bop at
the Salsa Station that has a live link to Buenos Aires. Or she’ll head home
and call up The Aural Analyser for an in-depth look at her own psyche

* * *

Name: Phreakophonacious (adopted); William P. Smith (real)

Age: 14

Job description: Schoolboy hacker

Salary: None, yet

Lives in: Cornfield, Iowa

Ambition: To hack into United Megacorp

Day in the life: Not in bed until 5am, Phreako (‘P’ to his schoolfriends)
rises at noon. But that’s OK because school’s only compulsory for part of
the day. He speed-views the lessons he missed on digital videotape – they
come over the superhighway. He likes art and maths, which seem creative.
But computing’s boring for someone who knows the networks outside in.

After school he hangs out at the shopping mall with his hacker friends.
They don’t have much money these days, not since the corporates wised up
and blocked network transfers of more than $10 outside office hours. One
of P’s friends hacked into an account with a $100 000 credit limit – but
it belonged to another hacker, and he got a virus back in return that wiped
out his own bank account.

P’s parents farm, but he doesn’t fancy that. Farming’s too risky full
time, and tiring. Besides they make their money by futures trading in corn
prices over the superhighway. He’s followed them in there, and watched them
at it. But it bores him, and he generally wanders off to try to break into
the biggest, strongest corporate systems he can find. P leaves them clues,
hoping one will offer him a highly paid job fending off other hackers.

* * *

Name: Robert Redwise

Age: 29

Job description: Network flier for PacWest Cablesound

Salary: $80 000

Lives in: Redwood City, California

Ambition: To attract enough venture capital to start up on his own

Day in the life: Red works only two days a week. That’s how he likes
it. Then he drives to the office, even though petrol costs $3 per gallon.
It’s mostly state tax designed to discourage car journeys. Most people still
don’t share rides, though.

At his desk, Red finishes his coffee and prepares for his six-hour shift
in virtual reality. He dons the headset and, using controls on his mobile,
flies into the network to fix the information bottlenecks. His friends are
sick of hearing the same old tales about interchanges, exits and lights,
and big, bright,traffic jams. Red eases up the flows either by writing some
software, or diverting the traffic, possibly through another company’s network.

The work is stressful. Red suspects that the headset is damaging his
eyesight, subtly but surely – just like the RSI that crippled his grandparents,
who spent their working lives at keyboards. But he enjoys going to the office
to meet the others.

* * *

Name: Janice Newbold

Age: 43

Job description: Grocer

Salary: What’s left in the till

Lives in: Farnborough, Hampshire

Ambition: To stay out of debt

Day in the life: Trained as a chemist, Newbold worked for British Aerospace
until the company moved to Spain where wages are lower. Her small redundancy
payment helped buy a shop. That was 10 years ago.

Things started well, but now every day seems harder. Before pricing
her goods she watches AM-TV for the supermarket adverts, writing down the
special offers. Even so, she relies on friends to shop with her when they
come for a chat.

Once a week Newbold logs on to the Supernet to try to assess the commercial
climate worldwide, but she can’t really afford even that limited access.
It’s a pity, because there’s a forum where FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods)
companies barter; but you need to be in it regularly to benefit. Foreign
companies control all the British gateways to the Net – the result of the
British government’s decision, in the late 1990s, not to help build it.

Newbold worries about the future for herself and her child. If she goes
bust, who will help? Not the child’s father, now working in Toledo, Ohio.
And not the government’s Child Support Agency, discredited long ago and
now just a sick joke. She thinks of selling up and moving – but who would
buy, where could she move to, and what skills can she offer?