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BBC News: The revolution will be postponed

"The internet was supposed to change everything."

Says who? Everything is such a big word.

"It was supposed to re-write the rules of business and free us from the drudgery of our daily existence."

It is. The revolution is not finished. It has hardly started.

"It was supposed to usher in a brave new world centred around freedom, knowledge and community. Except that it hasn't."

It hasn't? I suggest the BBC hasn't been looking very hard. There's knowledge and community around its own web site, for crying out loud! Not to mention the knowledge of the whole Internet, the millions of communities everywhere on the 'net.

Freedom has yet to be realized. The Internet has helped some gain more freedom, helped some lose it, and for the rest, not much has changed, except that freedom has gotten much more complex. It has never been so important to fight for freedom, because humanity has never had an opportunity to connect like we now can.

"Dot.coms are going bust in large numbers, tech stocks are tanking, no-one is using Wap phones and Stephen King has abandoned his attempt to re-write the rules of publishing."

Sounds like natural selection to me. Survival of the fittest. The ideas had merit but the execution was awful. Sick animals get eaten. Sick ideas get buried.

Written on December 4, 2000