From: J. Andrew Rogers (andrew@ceruleansystems.com)
Date: Wed Apr 19 2006 - 13:15:24 MDT
On Apr 19, 2006, at 10:22 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote:
> If the bubble had not happened, people would still have flocked to
> use and enjoy the stuff that the internet made available, would
> they not?
This a bit circular. The investment bubble is what drove much of
that "stuff" to be created in the first place. Once people
discovered a business case for publishing vast quantities of data on
the web, an enormous amount of money was invested in making that
available in hopes of extracting some kind of indirect profit from
it. We had the Internet you are describing before the internet boom,
except it was called AOL and Compuserve (among others).
A lot of that investment bubble stuff was pure crap, but the
incredible diversity of stuff funded by it for both fun and profit
generated a lot of rapid evolution. Sure, the Internet would have
happened anyway, but it would have happened a hell of a lot slower.
Have you considered the real cost of only having, say, 1998's
Internet today? We are all *far* richer for the sickening pace of
innovation and development that continues to occur. And a lot of
other unrelated innovation is also being driven faster as a direct
result.
J. Andrew Rogers
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