The Internet used to be interesting, just because it was the Internet. If you wanted to get some publicity for your local pub, cafe or psychiatric practice, you just had to announce that it had "gone on-line" and you could guarantee some local radio coverage and maybe even a brief mention in the national press. Ask the landlord of the Six Bells pub in Cambridge, who put a PC in the bar in 1996 and never looked back.
Now it's changed: the net seems to be everywhere, and just getting connected is no longer newsworthy. Even in the political arena, being "wired" has stopped being the story, now that every MP, political party and government department has a website. You can hardly move at Westminster for electronic government initiatives, on-line debates and virtual organisations, and every think-tank seems intent on following Nexus into cyberspace.
However, there's more to going on-line than throwing a few pages on to a website, adding an e-mail address and claiming to be part of the digital revolution. Most businesses have found that web publishing is a complex, time-consuming and expensive way of promoting their activities; the few large companies that have moved into electronic commerce in a big way have had to spend serious money to make it work; and still the major players in the on-line economy rarely make any actual profit.
We should not forget that the Internet - and the web - came out of the academic world, and not all uses are commercial. For public bodies, political parties, campaigning bodies and elected representatives, the web can provide a new way of working, one that is both more inclusive and more fluid than traditional forms of organisation or activism.
Some of the models being developed, like the moderated mailing-list with a web-based archive, have proven to be ideal for debating the finer points of policy. Others, like the chat-room, are great for holding committee meetings. And others - like a well-designed encrypted mailing-list - are perfect tools for organising direct action.
The net brings freedom from geography - you don't all have to be in the same place - and the clock - you don't all have to be there at the same time.
This means that groups can work in new ways, that representatives can develop a new relationship with their voters, and that campaigns can organise around new principles of effective action. It is these new ways of working that we want to recognise in the New Media Awards.
With the awards, the New Statesman plans to highlight - and reward - the best current work, as well as trying to get some sense of what new media mean to the political process as a whole. It also provides an opportunity to evaluate the real effectiveness of what is happening on-line today, with a group of judges drawn from national and local government, industry and the press, capable of looking at what is on offer and deciding whether it works and whether it makes a difference.
The political landscape will be changed by the Internet - bringing government to the citizen is part of that process, but only a small part - and we can see the outline of what politics will one day become by looking closely at what is happening today. The New Statesman awards are a good chance to spot the future before it arrives - and perhaps they will give us a chance to influence it, too.
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