World-wide fame and a pair of jobs with two of MTV’s hottest shows is a distant dream for your average 26-year-old drifters.

But for Jason Cornwell, the philosophically minded pawn of the Boston “Real World,” who went on to cast for the show and write for “Road Rules,” it was a nightmare.

“I did not flourish in the office environment,” Cornwell says in his unruffled part-surfer, part-redneck accent. “I just said, ‘This is not for me.’ I knew I felt most at home on the road, so I sat down and invented a way I could make money doing what I love.”

Cornwell’s brainchild, One for the Road Intercast Productions, is a unique technological experiment that mixes equal elements of “Blair Witch,” “Easy Rider” and Charles Kuralt’s quintessential “On the Road” news series.

One for the Road (www.1fortheroad.com) will feature Web-based video broadcasts of Cornwell and his crew traveling to unusual destinations across the country.

On Halloween day, the team will set off on the “Myths and Legends Tour of America,” the first and long-awaited journey planned by Cornwell and cronies Blair Stevens, a blossoming entertainment manager, and Bard Williams, a marketing manager for Macintosh.

The month-long, 28-stop expedition will include destinations ranging from a haunted bed and breakfast in San Francisco to a cemetery tour of New Orleans.

“The whole ghost phenomenon came in through my obsession with, ‘Are ghosts for real? Is there really a spirit world?'” Cornwell says. “So, I was like, ‘Well, I’m going to find out for my damn self.’ And if I can do that over the Internet — if we see a ghost and we got it, than how huge is that?

“You can make these things hobbies, or you can go out there and really figure out what the fuck is going on. I really want to know if this is reality — something I should take into consideration as far as spirituality goes in my own life.”

On a visit to The Gold Hill Hotel in an old mining town in Nevada, One for the Road will stay in a room where a ghost known around the hotel as Rosie supposedly dwells.

“We might actually pull a clairvoyant in and do a little s‚ance and conjure up her spirit,” Cornwell says. “I’m fucking petrified.”

Another pivotal stop on the tour is The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colo., the historic setting of Stephen King’s “The Shining.”

“The Stanley is one of my favorite places in the world,” Cornwell says. “I used to take my girlfriends there, and we’d get drunk and run up and down the hallways by ourselves and ask the guy working the front desk the history. He would tell us how a rancher shot three sons in the lobby and then shot himself.”

Cornwell, who grew up getting drunk and playing Ouija Board in abandoned school houses in his Arkansas hometown, is the ultimate wild child.

A former theater student, he has the makings of a star, even more so than former “Real World” stud Eric Nies.

Cornwell’s words drip of passion and pizzazz but are lightened with “totallys” and “rads.”

“One for the Road is giving me a reason to live, man,” he says. “It’s taking on its own life.”

The “Geeks of Silicon Valley”

When Charles Kuralt died a few years ago, Cornwell’s parents were disturbed by the news. Cornwell had never heard of him, but was considerably curious. Before taking off on one of his many cross country road trips, he bought some of Kuralt’s books on tape.

“He was a little bit before our time,” Cornwell says. “He was a guy who traveled around in a big fuckin’ Winnebago, him and his crew, and did these commentaries where they would just find human interest stories all around the United States. It would be something as simple as a guy who carved pumpkins in Vermont.

“He was a staple for the heart beat of America.”

After deciding to reincarnate “On the Road,” Cornwell came across Bard Williams at a high school Web design contest, where they were celebrity judges.

“I told him what I wanted to do,” Cornwell says, “And he said, ‘That’s a great idea. You need to do it on the Web.'”

One for the Road Intercast Productions formed soon after, and with the addition of Blair Stevens, the company began researching Internet technology.

Although the “Geeks in Silicon Valley,” as Cornwell calls them, are still making critical improvements on Internet broadcasting, One for the Road developed four ways to link the travelers with their audience, which Cornwell hopes will exceed one million.

Daily journal entries, downloadable photographs, live Web cam footage and delayed digital camera footage will all be incorporated onto the site.

“We’ll be shooting on a Web cam that will be directly hooked into a laptop computer that’s going to have a cellular connection,” Cornwell says. “But the fastest transmission rate you can get is 56K, which means a live video stream has a two to five second delay per picture and in some places, 10 seconds.”

Creating a live stream with audio and TV-quality picture requires a satellite connection and TV crew van, which Cornwell says, costs about $30,000 a day to rent.

But several momentous events will be shot with a digital camera, and those tapes will be sent back to the One for the Road Web master who will install them on the site in TV-quality footage.

“We’re at the cutting edge of technology,” Cornell says.

The real “Real World”

Along with exploring myths and legends, the tour will also be a probe into the travelers’ lives — much like “The Real World.”

Although some of Cornwell’s best buds are former “Real World” cast members, he does not speak too fondly of the show.

“No one wants to hear the ‘Real World’ kids complain,” he says. “It seems like a really easy thing to do, but in actuality, it’s the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

It’s tough to imagine Cornwell not out making friends with everyone who crosses his path, but he says his “Real World” experience made him introverted. When the filming was finishing, he actually went into hiding.

“The whole experience really puts it in your face who you are and where you are,” he says. “It’s the ultimate self-consciousness — which is such a bitch anyway.”

However, Cornwell says the show helped him discover who he really is.

“It showed me a way to get my feelings out there,” he says. “I just tried to show myself and how much pain and confusion I have in my life at the age of 24. And at that phase in my life, I wasn’t just a happy-go-lucky kid. I was pretty confused about what I wanted to do, where my soul was.

“I gained strength from putting it out there, whether I was happy that day or really fucking bummed out.”

Cornwell is hoping to gain more solidity from One for the Road and bring an audience deep into his psyche, which is something Kuralt never did.

“But this time, it’s under my terms — terms that I created,” Cornwell says. “This is not an MTV term. They don’t get to pick and choose what they show about my life. This is more realistic.”

A dream day in Branson

One for the Road, which is sponsored by Fossil Watches but currently pursuing additional backers, plans to do four journeys a year.

A second adventure, “Myths and Legends of the East Coast,” will kick off on Jan 15., with a surfing tour of the Pacific Coast Highway to follow. Cornwell hopes to sway away from ghost tours and eventually travel overseas for a motorcycle journey through Ireland and Scotland.

On the first “Myths and Legends” mission, he will make a few entertaining stops to keep the tour from getting too cryptic, such as a balloon rally in Arizona and a tailgate in Arkansas.

“We’re going to cover the tourism of Branson, Miss.,” he says, laughing. “Play putt-putt golf and ride go-carts all day, ask people why the hell they come to Branson and maybe hit a country show.”

Now that’s the real world.