July 5, 2001

5:21 PM

Optimism: Was the bust really a Bust (See below)? Douglas Rushkoff doesn't think so. But then, he's a pretty optimistic guy, if you ask me. (Warning, his article links to MetaFilter... Does that count as a self-link?)
posted by LAM (6 comments total)

No. And no.
posted by davidmsc at 6:49 PM on July 5, 2001

Please buy ads in our magazine! We swear we’re still relevant! Oh, god we were raking in ad cash during the hype storm, now we can barely afford door handles.

Please buy ads in our still relevant (we swear!) magazine. Look, Douglas Rushkoff — you’ve heard of him, right? — wrote this long article on how very important the Internet is to everyone, everywhere, always. Just like two years ago! Maybe we were a bit wrong about democratization through corporatization of media, isn’t everyone a little wrong once in awhile? It doesn’t change the fact that we have this magazine we have to put out every month, and our ad-to-edit ratio is plummeting, just like Fast Company. Remember when Fast Company was 200 pages? Have you seen that rag lately? It was 90 pages last month. Their masthead is dropping names like a Capitol Hill mixer.

We’re relevant! Our subject is so very relevant, and our readers are so very passionate about it.

Please pay attention to us. We have ad space to sell.
posted by capt.crackpipe at 6:51 PM on July 5, 2001

Actually from what I understand Yahoo! Internet Life is doing pretty good still, hence their move from "wow, the web is new" to "yeah, we all use the web - here's some info"
posted by owillis at 7:42 PM on July 5, 2001

Rushkoff is so much like Carl Sagan; both purist and driver of the bandwagon. What a stirring article!
posted by crasspastor at 11:17 PM on July 5, 2001

I like Rushkoff, though this article is a bit tame. Far better is this speech by Rushkoff, made, ironically, in front of an audience of still somewhat deluded wannabe dotcommers.

On reality -
"Reality itself IS open source."

On media -
"How do we come up with consensus? How do we decide what this reality is? Media. Media is where we negotiate the standards -- not just media standards -- reality standards."

On content -
"Content is not king. The people are."

On dotcoms -
"The mainstream media will tell us that the Internet is dead... it's like a beachball that lost its air. No... it's like a tree that just fought off a fungus."

On a side note, someone mentioned that the "old economy" investment tycoon, Warren Buffett, once explained that he didn't buy the dot com economy because the internet was like the airline industry -- great service to humanity; lousy return for investors. I think he has a point.

This isn't the end of free... this is the realization that no matter what you do on the Internet, you'll always be competing against that which is either free or ludicrously inexpensive. It's your job to come to grips with it. The Internet isn't going to change its fundamental nature for your benefit, after all.
posted by markkraft at 8:30 AM on July 6, 2001

"The mainstream media will tell us that the Internet is dead...

The mainstream media ("mm")has an incentive to paint the scene in this manner, both because doom is more sexy than slow growth and because the mm is competing against the Web (including Mefi). So, at least at the margins, don't believe the mm.
posted by ParisParamus at 9:32 AM on July 6, 2001