Posted 7:36 PM by *cnn
This book is nothing if not comprehensive, with in-depth case studies of some of the most wildly successful and erratic start-up companies of the internet bubble. As we are told again and again of their inevitable plummet the whole experiment becomes tired and repetitive. For me, if you've read about one internet company's rise and fall then you've heard them all, and John Cassidy does little to differentiate. He instead continually asks: Why were so many people willing to put so much money into an unstable economic entity? His ultimate conclusion seems to be: People are stupid, and people always assume other people are stupider than themselves.

Posted 11:03 PM by *cnn
While Cassidy's Dot con can be seen as a exhaustive chronicle of the internet boom and subsequent bust, it fails in very many instances to engage the reader in the subject matter. Most of the writing implies a specialist knowledge that only those already knowledgeable in the fields of computing and economics would possess. As such, the lesson being taught in the book are hard to comprehend. The author's dip into character analysis (of Marc Andreessen in particular) is half-hearted and unfocussed, while his knowledge of economics is packaged in drab analogies and banks of statistics. The phenomenom that was the speculative bubble of the 90's is interesting enough, but (dare I say it) the author managed to file away the edges of such a sharp subject matter with a technical vernacular and disinterest in the art of story-telling that did the subject no justice.

Posted 12:39 AM by *cnn
What hits me at this point about Cassidy's reportage is his awareness that not everyone will understand. For the most part this doesn't seem to bother him, as statistics and figures for economic growth are spouted continuously. Numbers are presumably thrown in to give the reader a sense of scale, but in many cases they do nothing but confuse the enormity of the rise and inevitable fall of the dot.com speculative bubble.
It seems this book was written particularly for computer and/or economics students, and since I am neither, I am finding large passages untranslatable. Occasionally though he makes an obvious effort to relate his field of expertise to simpler processes, like sewage systems (extremely useful inventions that can sometimes go haywire).
But through the talk of IPOs and PE ratios it becomes clear that Cassidy believes Wall Street and Silicon Valley conspired to hide the 'intrinsic value' of Internet stocks so as to fuel the bubble that funded their development.

Posted 9:51 PM by *cnn
The 'information superhighway' is probably one of the most overused and misunderstood terms surrounding the internet. More an idea that never took off than anything else, the term information superhighway was coined by Al Gore during 1990, and even he never seemed to really understand what he was talking about. "Vagueness was the key to the project's appeal." By all accounts, hyperbole was all this technology was good for, with many people talking about the demise of the daily, hard-copy newspaper as consumers tailored their online newspaper to suit their interests. But the information superhighway and interactive television (that other also-ran) trials were shut down by 1997 as the Internet was already rocking in the free world.
The Internet boom has been traced back to January 23, 1993, when Marc Andreessen released Mosaic, the first pragmatically useful web browser developed. When Mosaic appeared less than 1% of internet traffic was on the world wide web. Two years later more than a quarter of the 'net was being accessed through the world wide web. When Marc's efforts at NCSA went unnoticed he left for Silicon Valley. He later received an email for Jim Clark inviting him to join a new company. That company was to become Netscape.

Posted 8:35 PM by *cnn
The first chapter, 'from memex to world wide web', seeks to sum up the history of computers and computer networks, starting with inventor Vannevar Bush's 'memex' and finishing with Tim Berners-Lee's invention of the world wide web, which quickly became a private-sector enterprise. The dullness of this history is partnered perfectly by the dullness of Cassidy's language, including the dross recitation of acronyms ad nauseum.
popular capitalism tries to explain the workings of a speculative bubble generally, and point out where the Internet bubble fit the pattern, and where it carved its own path. According to Cassidy the end of the Cold War had two major effects; technological progress was now deemed a benign force that gave us colour TV, personal computers and life-saving medicine, and American capitalism was "almost universally accepted as the only viable model for economic development". In the spirit of these beliefs entrepeneurs and venture capitalists with little experience or profits behind them were able to float their 'concept companies' on the Nasdaq, making a lot of money on the Greater Fool Theory that seemed to sustain the bubble through the nineties. Investors persuaded themselves that there would always be a greater fool ready to buy their tech stocks at a higher price.

Posted 10:51 PM by *cnn
The prologue to this edition was written in November 2001, and, as such, took into account the most recent attack on American economic prestige, the World Trade Center attacks of two months previous. But John Casssidy points back further, to April 2000 when the Nasdaq crashed, for signs that all was not well on the American financial horizon. What began in August 1995 when Netscape went public and ended in April 2000 was, in Cassidy's words, "about ordinary Americans, enticed by the prospect of instant wealth, parting with their hard-earned money for worthless pieces of paper."

Posted 7:37 PM by *cnn
The first thing I do when I get a new book is read the blurb. On the back of the book John Kenneth Galbraith says this book is “the very best we will have” in regards to a historically and economically sound account of the rise of the internet and the ensuing stock boom. The blurb describes Cassidy as a vigorously skeptical journalist who was willing from the start to pursue and interview all the key participants (including Alan Greenspan). It also tells me that the author has “written extensively on the economy for the Sunday Times” and as a staff writer for the New York, all of which impressed me greatly. For computer and/or financial reportage a certain mix of technical and literary prowess is required so as to cater for experts and laymen. I opened Dot.con persuaded that John Cassidy might just impress me. Did he? Stay tuned.

Posted 6:35 PM by *cnn
etcetera