They come: "I tried cybersex once. I kept getting a busy signal."

That's when it hits you: Hollywood has accepted the overwhelming presence of the World Wide Web.

Cinema constantly evolves to incorporate themes and elements that are part of popular culture. Now, adding to that ever-growing list of props, stereotypes and stock scenarios is a new component: the Internet.

You've Got Mail, where the word 'cybersex' makes its appearance, was fairly recent. Keeping aside older sci-fi films and plots revolving around infotech networks however, cyberspace has come into its own, in a dramatic jump across media boundaries.

Remember The Net where Sandra Bullock plays a woman whose every trace of existence is computerised? Everything's fine till the day she gets accidentally 'deleted.' There was also Virtuosity, based in the year 1999, about an imprisoned LA ex-cop released to track a virtual killer escaped from cyberspace. A forgettable film, apart from the interesting: "How's the family? Still dead huh? Well that's reality for ya!"

In what could very well be the beginning of a new sub-genre then, HTML power has begun to occupy filmmakers in a manner reminiscent of gold mines and cowboys a few decades ago. When something like this happens, what we get is a flurry of releases all focusing on those magnificent men and their 56 KBPS machines.

For a start, this year, are three independent films Startup.com, e-Dreams, and Secrets of Silicon Valley.

Logging on to the Startup.com promo site gets you a quote by Jon Swartz, in USA Today: "The year 2000 was not kind to the young Internet industry. Tech stocks tanked. Fresh capital for dot-coms dried up. At least 130 online firms died and an estimated 40,000 dot-com workers lost jobs."

On that promising note, you realise that this is a film documenting the rise and fall of another ubiquitous dotcom. Filmmakers Chris Hegedus, D A Pennebaker and Jehane Noujaim thought up the idea when a friend of Jehane, Kaleil Tuzman, began to raise 'hundreds of millions of dollars without much of a business plan' and created govWorks.com, a site facilitating interaction between local government, citizens and businesses.

Filming began, and the drama unfolded. From zero to $40 million in venture capital, two people to 250, and the final days of bankruptcy - the cameras captured it all as the conflict grew, eventually altering not just financial positions, but lifelong friendships as well.

Keeping tabs on another site - a Web-based video-rental company called Kozmo.com - is e-Dreams. It follows the lives and times of Joseph Park and Yong Kang, two Korean-American investment bankers who create the Kozmo juggernaut. The cameras watch closely as Kozmo grows from five employees and one operating city in 1998, to 95 employees and two cities in 1999, 3100 employees and eleven operating cities in 2000 and, finally, zero employees and no operations by April 2001.

Secrets of Silicon Valley, the last of this trio, chooses an expose on, well, Silicon Valley. It balances our latent love of technology with downsides that reveal the cracks in its impenetrable armour. In terms of a plot, it is loosely structured around the lives of two activists running a computer training centre, and how they deal with rapid social change transforming the Valley. What we receive, at the end of it all, are insights on infotech, human greed, and the ill effects of globalisation.

As it continues to change our loves, then, expect more on the Internet, courtesy the big bad moguls at Hollywood. They've learned that while Meg and Tom will be around for a while longer, email will still outlive them. There is no getting away from it.

But you knew that already, didn't you?

Also Read:

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-- Act I Scene I : Movie origins on the Web
-- The Beatles have a dot com