After all, we're social animals. The story of civilization is the story of communication. Whenever people have had an opportunity to communicate, they've taken it. The more communication there is, the more we can specialize and the more our skills become transferable.

We're nowhere close to realizing the consequences of the Net, for two reasons. First, we've only got about 3.5% of the world's population on the network. Second, the Net is still in an immature state, relative to what it will be 5 to 10 years from now.

Let's get back to basics. Of all the things we can do with the Net, isn't it striking that the most popular application remains email?

It's still the killer application for the Internet, although instant messaging may eventually become even more important. I remember getting started with email in 1989. Originally, it was just a way of testing network connectivity. People were sending out updates about the status of the system. And then pretty soon, we were communicating with people who were one office over: "Want to have lunch?''

Look at this little gizmo [a BlackBerry email transmitter and receiver]. This is my email device. I carry it around and deal with all of its idiosyncrasies and replace the battery every three days. I mean, I pay about as much attention to this as I do to my dog. You've got to clean the screen. Stuff gets stuck in the keyboard. And it's invaluable. I swear to God, I type more with my thumbs on a BlackBerry than I do with all 10 fingers on a conventional keyboard.

I think in the future we're going to have very long thumbs with many joints, just so we can use these devices better. And people with those kinds of thumbs will be much more attractive to the opposite gender. Forget a firm butt; I want my spouse to have long thumbs, because my kids will not be disadvantaged!

George Anders (ganders@fastcompany.com), a Fast Company senior editor, is based in San Francisco. Learn more about Marc Andreessen and Loudcloud Inc. on the Web (www.loudcloud.com).

Sidebar: Five Things That Are Still True About the Internet

1. Small teams work best. Even within big companies, the best way to take advantage of Internet opportunities may be to put 50 people on a project, instead of 3,500. That's the best way to make sure that vital software is developed quickly, crisply, and with a tight focus. It also ensures that spending is in line with realistic current revenue prospects. There will be lots of time to hire later.
2. The Net allows you to get closer than ever to your customers. Feedback -- both positive and negative -- now arrives in real time. "Ad hoc testing of new market concepts becomes practically unlimited," says Andreessen. Click-stream analysis, for example, helps companies understand customers' thought patterns as never before. That makes it imperative for companies to put such knowledge to work, fast, within their own organizations -- because if they don't, their competitors will.
3. Information travels faster than ever. That applies to news events and, of course, rumors: Just consider the way the stock market fluctuates in response to new data. But it also applies to software, as we have seen with the stunningly rapid spread of Napster. The implications of this kind of change are jarring at times -- but ultimately, they will be beneficial.
4. Open systems become a lot more appealing than they were before. With the Internet, it's possible to have the whole world debugging your software, suggesting new products, or providing customer service. That creates an intriguing alternative to the traditional "cathedrals of knowledge'' -- big, centrally run companies that do their development in secret and that share only finished products with the outside world. For now, though, both models are working well; it's too early to say which will dominate.
5. Email remains the Internet's killer app. It's simple and unglamorous, but email meets a critical set of human needs. In business settings, it lets people communicate quickly, efficiently, and cheaply -- and whenever they want to. And the social implications of enabling so many people to be a mere email address away from one another keep growing all the time.

Sidebar: Five Things That Were Never True About the Internet

1. First movers always win. In fact, says Marc Andreessen, "most first movers end up lying facedown in the sand, with other people coming along and learning from their mistakes." Timing, execution, and having the right fundamental approach are what matter most. It's rare for the first entrant into a new industry to get all of those elements right. More often, a later arrival is the one that thrives.
2. Everything happens faster on Internet time. It's true that software evolution occurs much faster in the age of the Web. But a lot of other things don't speed up at all. Consumer preferences don't change quickly. And "the minute you get back into the physical world," warns Andreessen, "it's a lot harder to change fast."
3. It's all about traffic; the site with the most page views wins. Plenty of people created free sites, dreaming that they would soon be making money by turning brisk traffic into a paying proposition, either through advertising or through e-commerce. "That's the kiss of death," says Andreessen. In fact, attracting lots of eyeballs isn't worth much of anything if visitors to a Web site don't have an inherent reason to do business there.
4. Advertising can build a brand in a hurry. Not so. The Internet's best-known brands, such as Amazon, AOL, eBay, and Yahoo!, were all "built by grassroots adoption and word of mouth," says Andreessen. Advertising only reinforced that initial appeal to users. Internet companies that thought they could advertise their way to lasting fame were just plain wrong.
5. The popularity of the Internet puts us on the brink of some great convergence between voice, data, computers, and television. "Whenever anyone says 'convergence,' reach for your wallet," warns Andreessen, who believes that technological innovation is likely to produce greater divergence and greater specialization of devices. In particular, "the whole concept that people will want to interact with their television set is silly," Andreessen argues. "Interactive television happens when your football team loses, and you pitch a beer can at the screen."