***slightly OT***
yikes, ray, is our illustrious "Loring Wirbel" an anagram for misanthrope?
or am i simply afraid to admit that i feel the same way?
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November 15, 1999, Issue: 1087
Section: Semiconductors
Boundless prosperity?
LORING WIRBEL
techweb.com
Okay, I give up. If the market continues to roll with only minor downward corrections, my new millennium's resolution is to toss out all those back issues of The Economist that warned of speculative bubbles in the Internet economy. If everyone from Kofi Annan at Telecom 99 to John McQuillan at Next Generation Networks agrees that we are entering a new broadband era where prosperity continues unabated until the Dow tops 50,000, who am I to disagree?
Really, the folks at NGN made a good argument for suggesting that not just the content and software barons behind e-commerce, but also the infrastructure equipment makers involved in the plumbing of the Internet, should expect nothing but exponential growth for years to come. Speakers from Level 3 and Lucent made a good case for a model of price elasticity that would drive millions of newbies to demand always-on broadband connections, provided traditional carriers can be persuaded to stop trying to sustain high prices for voice services. If cheaper bandwidth promotes escalating numbers of Internet users the way cheaper MPUs made PCs a necessary household appliance, then all those involved in internetworking should just get richer.
The new metric after Cisco's acquisition of Cerrent [sic] Corp. is that good design engineers should be worth $25 million to $40 million each. Think about that. Maybe you don't even have to try to work 70-hour weeks any more. If you can come up with good PowerPoint slides to suggest a backbone aggregator for optical networks, go sell yourself to Lucent or Nortel and spend your life snowboarding.
So if this is all a foregone conclusion, why did everything at NGN feel Vegas-like in its easy money atmosphere? Our editor, Rick Merritt, identified some of the problems in a recent editorial (see Oct. 25, page 84), when he said it was useless to advocate universal broadband access to people who still have a deficit of food and shelter in their lives.
Maybe the flush of Internet cash for broadband services also seems surreal because it is not "about" anything. E-commerce aids in the accumulation of stupid toys, while potentially displacing living human bodies in the service industry as IS departments are gutted. But few can specify exactly how always-on broadband, and even universal tele-immersion, truly improves our quality of life. Casino capitalism has become self-referential capitalism, and there is little point to the snake that eats its own tail for the sake of more stock options. But I'll shut up. We're all happy-and rich-now. |
