Jeff Bozos is THE P.T. Barnum of our time: "The Internet Wears Out Its Welcome. -NUFF already. It is the surest sign that the Internet is totally mainstream: Everyone is tired of it, not just the sleep-starved
workers at dot-com startups, but everyone -- man and beast alike. Turn
on the television and you are assaulted by an endless parade of jabbering
advertisements for e-commerce companies. Newspapers are so bloated
these days with ads for dot-com marketers that dogs across the nation
must be loosening their teeth and straining their necks to fetch them.
The latest sign of the times was Time
magazine's selection last week of Jeff Bezos
of Amazon.com, the big online retailer of
everything from books to toys, as its
"Person of the Year." Time's cover headline
declares, "E-commerce Is Changing the
Way the World Shops." Inside is a large
picture of Mr. Bezos' face, doctored with a
white "e" inserted in his left eye. "An Eye on
the Future," says the accompanying
headline. Though Mr. Bezos is worth $10
billion, he doesn't really care about the
money, Time says. And a Time reporter
says that Amazon's workers are "all imbued
with this giddy faith that their best days lie
ahead of them."
Innovations in technology and communications -- the telegraph,
telephone, automobile, airplane and others -- have often touched off
waves of optimism and exuberant claims about how the new thing is
going to transform society. In the 1920's, for example, as the airplane
moved beyond the Red Baron stage and started to become used for
carrying civilian passengers, there was a lot of talk of every household
having a personal airplane in its garage. That strain of euphoria was called
"air-mindedness."
Technology historians remain skeptical that the Internet age can match
the period from about the 1880's to 1910 in terms of its impact on
people's lives. Inventions and new products from that period of
technological dynamism included Bessemer steel making, refrigeration,
the light bulb, the phonograph, the telephone, the radio, the automobile
and the airplane.
Still, the historians say, there does seem to be one truly distinctive feature
about the present. "I don't think there has ever been anything like the
Internet and cyberspace craze in terms of media hype," said Robert C.
Post, a technology historian and a former curator at the Smithsonian
Institution.
The use and abuse of a single vowel -- "e" -- also seems without
precedent. And I.B.M. is largely to blame. Since Lou Gerstner took over
in 1993, I.B.M. had been trying to give its image as a mainframe dinosaur
a makeover. By 1995, it was apparent that the Internet was the future,
and the company began promoting itself first as an expert in
"network-centric computing," then "network computing" and then
"Internet solutions" -- before settling on "e-business" in fall 1997. Rivals
scoffed at first, and then scurried to copy I.B.M. when the marketing
campaign caught on.
By now, all the Internet stories seem familiar -- of dot-com millionaires,
or billionaires, of young people fleeing business schools, investment
banks and consulting firms to join the Internet gold rush.
Mike Ruettgers, the president of EMC, which sells the big data storage
equipment used by so many e-commerce companies, was rummaging
through his briefcase recently and pulled out a family picture. It showed
his daughter at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she
worked. Still there? "Nah, she's 24 and went off to join a dot-com
company like everybody else," Mr. Ruettgers replied in a tone that
suggested he was belaboring the obvious.
Things could get more interesting if, as some analysts predict, there will
soon be a Darwinian winnowing among dot-com companies who have
bet so much of their venture capital money on ads to try to become
brand names during the do-or-die holiday season.
The winners will play on, while the losers will have little to show for it and
scant chance of raising more money. "These companies are burning
enormous amounts of cash, and there will be a massive shakeout in the
new year after it becomes clear who did well and who didn't," said
Michael Hansen, an e-commerce specialist at the Boston Consulting
Group. " |
