http://slate.msn.com/?id=2070360 Andrew Sullivan and Kurt Andersen talk about weblogs! Andersen once wrote a sublime piece on the irrational exuberance that drove “new economy” for Inside.com called “The Revolution Is Glorious, and the Sky Is Falling. Get Used To It.”
Relying on journalists and stock-market professionals for one’s view of the Internet’s future is like relying on a referendum of sugared-up 11-year-olds for an assessment of the Jolly Rancher and Pokemon industries. In the mid-’90s, no two groups of high-end professionals had migrated more swiftly or come to depend more absolutely on PCs and the Internet to do their work. No two occupational groups have a more highly excitable, adrenaline-addicted nature, or a greater tendency to skitter along in unthinking packs, sheep-like.
In the same article Andersen declared that we are living in an age of paradox—one in which it was possible to be simultaneously successful and unsuccessful—and famously compared internet pioneers such as Jim Clark and Jeff Bezos to Columbus:
… Christopher Columbus Was a Failure. His business model did not pan out: no western route to Asia, hardly any gold, abandonment by his investors, not much of an enduring first-mover advantage for Spain … but he fucking discovered America. Netscape is vestigial and may cease to exist before long, and Amazon.com may or may not be a Fortune 500 company a decade from now, but Jim Clark and Jeff Bezos will always be Columbuses.
(The article costs 40¢, but I don’t think they actually bill you until buy $2.00 of stuff.) 15:03
