The Web Runs on Love, Not Greed
>By Kevin Kelly
>
>Right on cue, the demise of the dot-com revolution has prompted skepticism
>of the Internet and all that it promised. An honest evaluation would have
>to admit it has been a very bad year for hip startup companies, hi-tech
>investors, and hundred of thousands of workers in the technology field.
>Three trillion dollars lost on Nasdaq, 500 failed dot-coms, and half a
>million hi-tech jobs gone. Even consumers in the street are underwhelmed
>by look-alike gizmos and bandwidth that never came. The hundreds of ways
>in which the Internet would "change everything" appear to have melted
>away, or to have not happened at all. As the end of the year approaches a
>collective New Year's resolution is surfacing: "Next year, next time, we
>won't believe the hype."
>
>This revised view of the Internet, as sensible as it is, is a misguided as
>the previous view that the Internet could only go up. The Internet is less
>a creation dictated by economics than it is a miracle and a gift.
>
>Netscape's legendary IPO in 1995 launched the web in the mind of the
>public. That jumpstart happened not much more than 2,000 days ago. In the
>2,000 days since then, we have collectively created more than 3 billion
>public web pages. We've established twenty million web sites. Each year we
>send about 3.5 trillio