Exploring Cool things happen in web production houses. They tweak today's tech for clients who want something easy to understand and that won't blow up. Microsoft, Netscape, Sun.
Deep pockets provide freedom, but they still want to shrink wrap and ship.
The next cool things happen late at night in the windowless university computer labs. Here making something wild happen is the goal. An academic lab has to function like the random element in the evolution of New Media, producing mutation after mutation. Most of them fail. But every now and then the power of the idea and the power of the technology meld and the result is something new, unique, and transforming.