Abstract:
This article is a critical reflection on the dot.com boom and the volatile industry, discipline and conditions of labour it has spawned. It offers an
autobiographical insight into my past experiences as one of its labourers, as well as my current perspective as an academic responsible for
cultivating these industry professionals. Autobiography offers an opportunity to impart my observations as a practitioner in the multimedia industry
during its heyday, and lends to them an 'experiential authority' (Clifford, 1988: 35) which has been largely ignored in dot.com studies. According to
Stanley (1997), autobiography offers a connection between the individual and the social, in this case, the individual new media worker and larger
industry of which I was part. In addition, as an educator I am familiar with the importance of reflective practice in experiential learning (Boud and
Miller, 1996: 3; Beaty, 1992: 13) and have access to the experiential data of my students to examine the role of creativity in multimedia practice.
