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At the other end of the respectability spectrum there’s our own Peter Oakley, aka geriatric1927. An 80-year-old widower who had taken an IT course, he bumbled amiably on to YouTube in August last year. He posted a gimmickless video of himself just talking about his life and, within a week, he was No 1 on the video-sharing site. That first video has now scored 2.65m views. He found himself with an audience of tens of thousands of kids less than a quarter of his age. They got in touch.

“There are so many people,” he says wistfully, “who haven’t spoken to their grandparents, or their grandparents are dead. They seem to see me as a grandparent with whom they can converse.”

There’s nothing weird, wacky or alcohol-related about Oakley, he’s just this nice old bloke. There’s also nothing phony. Many would-be web celebs or, indeed, paedophiles, hide behind fake names and identities. But what you see with Oakley is what you get – he is, indeed, a geriatric and he was born in 1927.

“I wanted to make sure people knew I was old. ‘Geriatric’ was the first word that came into my mind and 1927 indicated the date of my birth. I was trying to be upfront about everything.”

Oakley is now a global web celeb; his sign-on greeting – “Hello, YouTubers!” – is a web catchphrase. When we spoke, a German television crew had just left and a Korean crew had been there a week before. He’s bombarded with letters. “I don’t have to answer them all, but if you were to read them you couldn’t not answer them. They pour out their hearts to me.”

Welcome to the weird and, sometimes, extremely touching world of the web celebs.

What is all this about? In a nutshell, it is about something called Web 2.0. Web 1.0 was the internet that imploded with the crash of 2001. It could never have worked anyway. It was based on slow dial-up connections and total control of content by the cybergeeks who operated the pages. Putting anything on a web page in those days required a high degree of technical expertise. Joe Schmoe, therefore, could only ever be a passive consumer.

Web 2.0 works because it is based on fast broadband connections and massive user control of content. Joe Schmoe can now post anything on the web in an instant. Blogs can be created in minutes. “It’s really simple to use,” says Hilton/ Lavandeira. “In less than five minutes I was online to the world.” On social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Flickr, Friendster and countless others, anybody can post words, pictures, videos, music and connect with hundreds of millions of others around the world.

The full impact of Web 2.0 will undoubtedly be massive, but is, as yet, incalculable. “It is changing human institutions,” says Esther Dyson, one of the supreme global prophets and analysts of internet technology. She is demonstrably right. All media, from movies to local papers, are in a state of panic bordering on meltdown as Web 2.0 steals their advertising revenue, consumer attention and intellectual property. Institutions like universities and schools are being drained of authority as people pick and mix from the information bazaar.

But Dyson is also right when she adds that the one thing Web 2.0 can’t change is human nature. Joe Schmoe will go online with the same old instincts and impulses. Behind this revolution lies the familiar mix of egotism, tribalism, lust and neurotic desire for recognition that defines the human animal. The web celebs are the most vivid examples of how human nature is finding expression through new technology.

In Web 1.0, human nature expressed itself primarily through lust and greed. Everybody was trying – and failing – to find new ways of making money, and delivering pornography was the main purpose of the web. Both are still present in Web 2.0, but they have changed. Making money, through online gambling and advertising focused on individual users, for example, exploits the new levels of interactivity. Pornography is now delivered with streaming video and, frequently, high levels of interactivity. In addition, there are now porn social-networking sites. You can post your home-made porn on one site and join in the fun as a voyeur on another. And there are endless sites offering the full 2.0 sex experience. Violet Blue calls herself a “pro-blogger, podcaster, vlogger and femmebot”. She’s written “ultimate guides” to cunnilingus and fellatio and, of course, The Smart Girl’s Guide to the G-Spot. Her site is a sex shop and supermarket of self-promotion – lust and recognition all in one super-refined techno-package. As one leading British thinker put it, “How come the highest technology is always used for the lowest purposes?”

But what is really new in all this is the attention-seeking, the overpowering need for recognition. “Sex is an amazing driving force,” says Dyson. “Attention isn’t quite that visceral, but it’s going to be a strong force in the future.”