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"Lots of us find it a very helpful, human, sometimes humorous, always interesting, often surprising column that has no peer on the freelance market, And, yes, you can use that as a testimonial if it helps."
-- Bill Dowd, Albany Times Union

"No one talks about the ups and downs of technology like Michael Finley. See his columns online at www.mfinley.com/. -- James S. Derk, Evansville (IN) Courier

"Editors want everything to fall into a neat little box, and your stuff doesn't do that. You don't write merely about technology, you write about what technology means to us and how it has changed us. I like it." -- John Boxmeyer, St. Paul

Last spring I embarked on an experiment in e-capitalism. Using an inexpensive credit-card escrow service [now defunct] called Buy-It, I offered up some of my books and other writings for sale ($15.95 plus $3.20 shipping), then sat back and waited for the orders.

Last week, as the first snows flew, I got my first order, for a copy of Why Change Doesn't Work, a book I co-wrote with Harvey Robbins. It was a tepid event in publishing lore, selling about 1200 copies stateside over four years. It is out of print now, except for the U.K. where it is a modest but steady seller.

Problem: the buyer, a gentleman named Peter Kunc, paid $19.15 by credit card into BuyIt's escrow account. But his e-mail address ends in "Si" -- Slovenia.

Now, George W. Bush may not know the difference between Slovenia and Slovakia. I do, from a childhood spent waiting tables in an eastern European restaurant in Cleveland, serving up hot dripping platters of patooska and gowumki.

But I can't afford to ship to either place for $3.20. In fact, shipping something there by FedEx or UPS Worldwide would cost more than the book. Which put a considerable damper on my scheme to milk the reading world of its cyberdollars.

I was obliged to apologize to Mr. Kunc and refer him to Amazon.co.uk, which I knew could provide him with a copy.

After which, my e-commerce sales total was returned to -- let's add it up -- zero. And I thought to myself, this isn't how it's supposed to be.

To hear the e-commerce talk, we should be living in the Age of Content. Capitalization, location, and market share are all supposed to diminish in influence. But content, the real stuff, having something to say -- that's the new determiner of value.

You may ask, what are the financial underpinnings of my content empire?

They are, as writers' empires have been since the first chimp typed the opening terza rima of The Divine Comedy, tenuous. Until last winter, I wrote my tech column for pay from my local daily newspaper. For whatever reason, the newspaper cut me loose. So I had to decide: Should I stay or should I go? Keep writing the column, or try something else?

I decided that I enjoyed doing it too much to quit. And there began the most wonderful year for me.

I decided I wasn't a "tech writer" any more. Didn't have to be, now that I had no anchor publisher. I could write any damn thing I pleased. So I fashioned a slightly different beat for myself -- covering not the latest gadgets but the social war being waged between technology and the human souls who must absorb it. Tech versus touch.

It's a big beat, and the war seesaws back and forth every hour, the bad guys gaining ground, then the good guys winning some key victory. I call it "Future Shoes."

Then I decided to stop calling it a "column." A column implies newspaper space that needs filling. A column therefore is just filler, like Windex in a bottle, or biscuits in a tin . From now on I would write stories and letters, from me to you. It would have a different feeling from what you find in newspapers. It would embody what it is about -- the soul's struggle to prevail against the steady plod of change.

OK, so the world hasn't beat a path to my door. But I send my weekly letter to over 700 persons now. And it gets picked up by the incredibly prescient editors of the Albany Times Union, and sometimes, the San Francisco Examiner.

Perhaps best of all, it runs in a very special online newspaper, the American Reporter.

The American Reporter was the first Internet-only daily newspaper. It has no print version. Run by Joe Shea, a grizzled journalism vet encamped in Hollywood, California, the American Reporter created, on a shoestring, a new model for what online news can be. It embodies the traits of accuracy, editorial courage, and rapid response.

I was flattered when Joe invited me to join his gang of world-splattered scribes a couple years ago. I mean, those people are on the ground in Jakarta and Kosovo and Santiago, dodging bullets and braving intimation. By contrast, I just sit in my room and tap keys.

But this week, I got this e-mail from Joe:

Dear Mike, I am very pleased to tell you that you have been chosen as the 1999 American Reporter Correspondent of the Year. The choice reflects the high quality of your writing, your long dedication to our publication, and your amazing ability to find rich new dimensions of meaning in the simple and not-so-simple conduct of our lives. Sincerely, Joe Shea

The award, like the pay at American Reporter, is modest. But it felt so good to me, especially after being cast aside a year ago by my hometown paper, to be recognized by these dedicated professionals.

The Age of Content? We're not there yet. We may never be. The big money wants to prevent there ever being one, so they can continue to package generic stuff and call it news.

But dollars or no, I'm going to keep banging on my drum. In the words of that other disappointed capitalist, Shylock of Venice, I am content.

America's Best-Loved Futurist(TM), Michael Finley has a free gift for visitors to http://mfinley.com.