How right Pioch was. Bill Gates has just bought a notebook of Leonardo da Vinci, and let’s hope that like some of the old robber barons, Gates will habitually share his acquisitions with the world. But a major difference shows up here. Andrew Carnegie and the rest did not make their money off art and entertainment, part of Gates’ master plan. For Bill Gates to give away great paintings and manuscripts will be like Carnegie giving away steel. His motives may be the most ethereal, and with a $10-billion net worth, he can afford many a donation; but a conflict will forever arise between Gates the businessman and Gates the philanthropist. Just which side will prevail when he dies? If not in life, then in death, by way of his lawyers, will he have the decency to turn _all_ his old masters loose on the Net for free viewing? No judgments here. Perhaps that day will come. He has already agreed to loan the notebook to a museum. Old masters, of course, are far from the only Culture on the Net, and I doubt that Bill Gates will be interested in buying some of the other kind—especially Bianca’s Smut Shack. Don’t ask me if Bianca exists. The Shack’s “trolls” swear that she does. If so, maybe a good many Netfolks know her at least slightly. They can click on a picture to flit from room to room of her virtual apartment on the Web, leave notes on the walls of her virtual bathroom, enter her virtual music room to take in the latest jazz or rock, or engage virtually in sex acts with strangers in Argentina or Brazil or San Francisco or wherever else hormones fuel technology. Bianca’s proud trolls have not sold out their mascot; the virtual Bianca lives on the Web for fun, not direct money making. But sooner or later, elsewhere on the Net, if this has not happened already, an ad agency will create a fictitious character who buys CDs, foods, books, video tapes, automobiles, and other products only from hidden “sponsors”—not open, MCI-style ones (as described in chapter 2). I’ll hope that day is far off. The FCC has had problems enough regulating children’s TV; imagine what could happen if supposedly educational areas knuckled under to Madison Avenue. I’m not sure if laws are the solution here, but it would behoove Net providers to come up _now_ with rules against that sort of thing. In the fun areas of the Net, other dangers lurk for the vulnerable. Millions of Netfolks enjoy role-playing in imaginary worlds known as Multi-User Dungeons, where they can be knights or damsels, regardless of gender—sometimes men assume women’s roles to win more attention. At the risk of sounding like Stoll and the Snubbites, I have mixed feelings about the worth of MUD-style diversions.