The Irish are famous for building things. We built America's railroads and highways, New York's skyscrapers, Britain's motorways, and London's bridges. Now, it seems, we are at it again. Many of us are building the electronic infrastructure for the Internet, both at home and abroad.
San Francisco, the capital of the Internet revolution, is no stranger to Irish immigrants. Nearly 10,000 Irish have settled here in the past six decades, (not all of them builders). And we are still coming, but now we are brandishing laptop computers instead of trowels.
Perhaps it's this desire to build things, or our aptitude for communication, or maybe, it's just the money such occupations bring. But this city is abuzz with Irish Net designers, developers and programmers all readying their virtual shovels to build the next phase of the Web.
Mr Stephen McGarrigle, co-founder of Xradio.com, and Mr Rossa Sheridan, co-founder of Technogenesis.com, are two such Irishmen who are forging new frontiers for the Internet.
As the Web developers of two of the most hip music sites on the Net, they are keeping the Irish penchant for music and building going. It is perhaps no coincidence then, that they both work just a stone's throw away from San Francisco's famous Haight-Ashbury district, the one-time spiritual Mecca for the hippie movement in the 1960s. and 1970s.
Just a few blocks from the house where the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin hung out in 1969 is X-radio's headquarters. Outside, the building resembles many of the city's Victorian-style wooden houses. Inside, Mr McGarrigle and business partner Mr Paul Risenhoover are hosting a Webcast (a music broadcast over the Web).
This week, Charlotte The Baroness, one of the West Coast's better known techno DJs, is satiating the need for good psychedelic-trance for Web users as far afield as South Africa, Costa Rica and Latvia.
However, X-radio is not your typical Internet start-up. Here, the founders are more likely to travel to work on a skateboard than in a Porsche.
Mr McGarrigle came to San Francisco just four years ago armed with a degree in communications from Dublin City University and a passion for techno, trance and hip-hop music.
For the first two years here, he worked by day as a Web developer, while by night he and Mr Risenhoover built X-radio, a site where techno fans can listen to new releases, read reviews and buy CDs online.
X-radio was a new concept. Web users can listen to music broadcast 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and if they like a track they can buy the full CD. In late 1995, when X-radio started, this concept took quite some engineering, because off-the-shelf e-commerce products were not as readily available as they are now.
"We're just building the electronic infrastructure of the 90s," says Mr McGarrigle.
"The only difference is now we are using HyperText Markup Language (HTML) instead of bricks and mortar."
Now X-radio has achieved a near-cult status with nearly 20,000 visitors per week to its Web site.
About a five-minute drive down the street is Mr Sheridan's Technogenesis.com live-work space, which he shares with his business partners.
Technogenesis.com also specialises in providing techno music, but allows techno fans to build and buy their own CDs online. The business model is promising, if not a little too cutting edge to be a big money spinner in the very near future. For as little as 99 US cents per track, fans can digitally record a compilation album.
The company's computer servers then burn this selection onto a CD, and Technogenesis.com staff mail it to the customer.
Mr Sheridan is no stranger to the entertainment industry; he previously worked as a theatre lighting director before suffering a back injury. So he decided to retrain as a Web-developer and got a job with Internet pioneer HotWired.
Technogenesis.com came about six months ago when he was looking for a new apartment on Craig's List, a San Francisco-based community bulletin board on the Internet.
"I just saw this amazing e-mail from two ravers looking for a third person to share a live-work space and start a Web-based music company," said Mr Sheridan. "I just had to reply."
Six months later, the completed site is steadily building up a cool clientele list.
But to own stock in a start-up is a very 1990s phenomenon. Perhaps if Mr Sheridan and Mr McGarrigle were around in the days of the Grateful Dead, they would be strumming guitars with some stoner band on Haight Street, instead of being glued to computer screens all day.
"Perhaps," admits Mr McGarrigle. "But I think that I would own or work in an avant-garde record store. X-radio is really the digital equivalent of that."
X-radio can be found at http://www.xradio.com and Technogenesis.com can be found at http://www.technogenesis.com.
Niall McKay is a San Francisco-based journalist who writes about technology. He can be reached at contact@niall.org.
