Flash Forward

It's 4:30 A.M. and Eric Jordan is still staring at the dual monitors of his PC. One screen is filled with lines of computer script. The other screen is straight from a sci-fi movie: a traveler poised at the water's edge. A tiny rowboat waiting on the shore. And across the water, a futurescape skyline glimmering beneath a double moonrise. At the city's center, a Mayan temple beaming light toward the stars. This is "Attractor," the latest incarnation of Jordan's award-winning website and the portfolio home page of his industry-leading Web design firm 2Advanced.com.

The light, sound and movement on the screen are the work of Flash, an interactive design environment hosting a yin-yang balance of programming and art. Since the mid-'90s, Flash and Eric Jordan's lives have been closely intertwined. And now, both stand at the virtual gates of a digital revolution.

Peeling his eyes off the screen, Jordan gently pushes away his cat, Halo, from pawing at the mouse beneath his hand. Cat and mouse, the pun makes him smile. He's always been more writer than coder. More artist than designer. More storyteller than website builder. But you'd never know it. Nicotine-lean, techie-pale, but with a healthy splash of SoCal metro, Jordan comes off as a suave charmer in a world of computer geeks. Fast car. Successful company. DJ career on the side. He is both highly adored and jealously despised, but no one denies that his influence has been anything less than iconic.

At 29 years old, this Cal State Long Beach dropout employs two dozen handpicked designers and programming specialists, commands an A-list clientele that includes Fox, Ford and Electronic Arts, and has won virtually every award in the business, including Adobe's "Most Influential Flash Site of the Decade" award. His signature "future-look" is universally considered the most imitated aesthetic on the Web, with latent copies nicknamed "2A Rips." Eric Jordan is, apparently, a man with everything.

Inside his headphones, the techno--a posting from his free monthly music blog, Neverrain.com--is deafening. He barely remembers purchasing the modern furniture in his maid-tidy apartment. His longtime girlfriend left him at some point in his all-consuming career trajectory. His friends are his co-workers. For a decade, he's poured himself into the Web. He's played it every song, told it every story he knows, even invented new ones. And where has it all gotten him? These endless deadlines. This coder's dawn patrol. Is there any real satisfaction in a wholly virtual existence?