Is the Internet a bad, bad boy?

Extremist positions on each side have fueled both the local debate over the merits of the new economy in San Francisco and the national dialogue. For every outraged activist like Sue Hestor, who can barely talk about dot-coms without swearing, there is a techno-apologist like Touretzky, who says he has no sympathy for people "whining about property prices."

More space needs to be given to voices that can negotiate a middle ground. People like Michele Turner, 33, a Berkeley filmmaker who is sympathetic to artists but whose documentary "Digital Schoolroom" focused on how computers are changing education; or Rachel Riggan, 27, and Daphne Bernard, 26, graphic designers who have protested for the arts in San Francisco but consider dot-com scapegoating unproductive, even violent.

Meanwhile, less powerful dot-commers have banded together into groups like the Digital Workers Alliance, a group of technology employees dedicated to saving the arts. At least one group, Hip4SF, has gone even further, setting up an online bulletin board where artists and philanthropists can meet.

People in this crowd tend to separate the economic and cultural benefits from the unintended consequences. "It's a complex issue," says Louisa Van Leer, an architect who works in the Mission and has been mistaken for a dot-commer. The focus should be on people, she says, not technology. "No one was here first; it's just a matter of making room for everyone," she says.

Even if people don't realize it at first, "Technology is always a double-edged sword," says Ray Kurzweil, inventor of the first music synthesizer to mimic a grand piano and other orchestral instruments.

"The world with the Net is not 'better' so much as 'different,'" says Bill Joy, chief scientist at Sun and author of a now famous Wired magazine article that called for computer scientists to take more responsibility for their actions. "If we work to accentuate the many positive things, the wealth [technology] creates should be accompanied by many good things, as well as some bad ones. Since the Net isn't going away, this seems to me to be the constructive thing to do."

I couldn't agree more. When I came to San Francisco just over a year ago, I didn't know much about the Net's radical roots, nor did I realize that I would soon be pressured to choose between the two reasons I moved here: my dot-com job and the arts. But I've learned a lot since then, including how not to choose, how to separate the technology from the greed that's accompanied it.

What's so frustrating is that others have not. The present debate has less to do with logic than with anger -- at Willie Brown's penchant for overdevelopment, at dot-commer greed and at activists who claim to be fighting gentrification, but actually care only about getting attention. Few protesters or dot-commers seem to realize that these feelings, however justified, only damage technology and the arts by driving a wedge between them. This wedge is not natural; culture, counterculture and the Net belong together. Yet, anti-dot-com development protests still gather 400 to 1,000 people while diplomatic meetings -- like one held Oct. 25 to discuss solutions, "not Prop. L or Prop. K" -- draw no more than 80. Forget development, dot-com greed and activist sanctimony, this is what needs to change. Enough with the funerals; let's plan a marriage.

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