George Gilder on the buildout of internet infrastructure (2000)

ASAP: Why is it important we build an all-optical network? 

Gilder: Optical networks are vital to the fulfillment of the business plans of the Internet economy and the future of world peace and prosperity.  We already have an all-optical network in the critical paths of large portions of the infrastructure--chiefly the passive parts.  It will rapidly spread over the next five years to reach into campuses, enterprises, and cities. 

ASAP: So I take it you don't think the promises surrounding this all-optical network have been overstated?

Gilder: They have been drastically understated by companies that want to retrofit optics into the old system rather than create a new network that fulfills the intrinsic promise of a worldwide web of glass and light. 

~ George Gilder, "Gilder On Optics," by Eric W. Pfeiffer, Forbes ASAP, August 21, 2000

(Quote provided by Fred Hickey in a July 15, 2024 tweet.)

Daily Mail: "The Internet may be only a passing fad" (2000)

The Internet may be only a passing fad for many users, according to a report. 

Researchers found that millions were turning their back on the world wide web, frustrated by its limitations and unwilling to pay high access charges.

They say that e-mail, far from replacing other forms of communication, is adding to an overload of information.

Experts from the Virtual Society project, which published the report, say predictions that the Internet would revolutionize the way society works have proved wildly inaccurate.

~ "Internet 'may be just a passing fad as millions give up on it'," Daily Mail, December 5, 2000

Kevin Duffy on how the 2000 tech bubble led to internet 2.0

The dot-com bubble of 2000 was never the internet itself, but the notion of “first mover advantage.” There was a gold rush mentality to stake claims, and it was the internet pioneers who largely took the arrows in the back. If anything, the optimists underestimated the transformative nature of the new technology. The early 2000s shakeout cleared the way for a powerful second wave that drove the economy and made vast fortunes for the settlers. 

In March 2000, when the NASDAQ Composite peaked at just above 5,000, Amazon.com hadn’t recorded its first $1 billion in sales, Google was in diapers generating $19 million in revenue, and Mark Zuckerberg had yet to reach his 16th birthday. Today the founders of Amazon, Google and Facebook are worth a combined $440 billion and their companies valued at $4.22 trillion, not quite 10% of the total U.S. stock market capitalization.

~ Kevin Duffy, "Bubble Lessons," The Coffee Can Portfolio, April 26, 2021

Bob Simon on the "dot-com kids" in Silicon Alley (2000)

If you know anything at all about the Internet, you know you can practically live your life without ever leaving your computer.  You can order books without ever going to the bookstore, reserve airline tickets, even buy food for your house pet.  That's the 20th century; in other words, yesterday.  The new stuff is percolating out of a bunch of old buildings in downtown Manhattan, and the people who work there call themselves "the dot-com kids."  They're cool, they're hip, they're very rich and very young...  Their motto could be "Never invest in anyone over 30."

~ Bob Simon, "The Dot-Com Kids," 60 Minutes, February 15, 2000

Paul Krugman on the growth of the Internet (1998)

The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law' becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.

~ Paul Krugman, 1998

George Gilder on the new boom based on the Internet economy (2008)

From the pits of the crash of 2000, when the Internet and the dot.com siege were famously dismissed as a barren "bubble," came Google and MySpace to rise up and take all the chips and establish a new Internet economy.  If creativity was not expected, governments could plan it and socialism would work.  But creativity is intrinsically surprising and the source of all real profit and growth.

Because the U.S. remains the world's largest economy and still leads the world in business and technological creativity, the current crisis is mostly confined to boondoggles in finance.  It will pass rapidly and evolve into a new boom.  Emerging is a parallel unregulated financial system based on entrepreneurial creativity and invention.

At the heart of this multitrillion-dollar engine of growth are 741 venture capital firms that traffic in creativity as a business.  These firms command $257 billion under management and have launched companies generating $2 trillion in revenues.

~ George Gilder, "The Coming Creativity Boom," Forbes, November 10, 2008

Howard Davidowitz on the coming transformation of the American retail marketplace

With the explosion of online sales, what happens to all of these retail malls and the tons of shopping centers that are marginal? I think there are huge questions going forward about size of stores, location of stores, distribution facilities. Huge changes are going to be taking place in the next five years as people continue to shop online.

~Howard Davidowitz, chairman, Davidowitz and Associates, Bloomberg.com interview, December 31st, 2010

Ron Paul on personal freedom and the Internet

The most basic principle to being a free American is the notion that we as individuals are responsible for our own lives and decisions. We do not have the right to rob our neighbors to make up for our mistakes, neither does our neighbor have any right to tell us how to live, so long as we aren’t infringing on their rights. Freedom to make bad decisions is inherent in the freedom to make good ones. If we are only free to make good decisions, we are not really free.

Socialist ideologies blur this line between self reliance and government control because the mistakes of the individual are spread to everyone else. Thus the government becomes very interested in your decisions and way of life, with the justification that you could make a mistake others will have to pay for. The end result is, of course, that everyone loses privacy and control over their own lives. Whether they realize it or not, they are no longer truly free.

~ Ron Paul, Personal Freedom and the Internet (June 30, 2008)

Fred Hickey: "Vast overbuild of Internet infrastructure capacity"

Internet equipment suppliers like Cisco, Nortel and Ciena will not miss numbers in Q3, though I am beginning to see cracks in their armor. Investors pile into these stocks at ever more absurd prices because they are sure that there is no earnings risk in coming quarters. However, investors are ignoring the longer-term implications of the vast overbuild of Internet infrastructure capacity (bandwidth, hosting centers, etc.) that has been occurring over the past few years.

Mania-driven thinking has persuaded investors to believe that the demand for Internet infrastructure is limitless.

~ Fred Hickey, editor, The High-Tech Strategist, September 2000