From: Mikko Särelä (msarela@cc.hut.fi)
Date: Wed Apr 19 2006 - 10:24:44 MDT
On Tue, 18 Apr 2006, Richard Loosemore wrote:
> But on the other hand, if Seidensticker wants to point to stupidly
> overhyped technology, he is speaking words of wisdom. The imaginary
> version of the internet that drove the investors into a feeding frenzy
> in the late 1990's was a complete fiction. By itself, the internet was
> good, but it was not *that* good. There are a lot of details that we
> could argue about here, but my basic point is that the internet by
> itself (not the other things that might one day be facilitated by it,
> but the direct thing in itself) was not something to get that worked up
> about. It was convenient for the Market, because the Market has a
> voracious need for (controlled) volatility, fresh blood and emotional
> enthusiasm in order for the skillful players to make their killings, but
> for the world in general it would have been better if the internet had
> simply developed at a regular pace and nobody threw a hundred billion
> dollars down the toilet trying to get rich on it.
Actually, it is not clear that the investment was a bad thing from
society's perspective. It was from the investor's perspective. The reason
for this is that all those billions of dollars educated millions of people
to the challenges and possibilities of computer science and the Internet.
This in turn hastened the evolution and revolution caused by Internet.
--
Mikko Särelä http://thoughtsfromid.blogspot.com/
"Happiness is not a destination, but a way of travelling." Aristotle
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