In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters, Second Edition

Chapter 11. PURPLE HAZE ALL THROUGH MY BRAIN: The Internet and ASP Busts

When the Internet exploded on the public consciousness in 1994, one of the reasons for the early excitement was that it seemed so fresh and new. This freshness was, as much else about the Internet proved to be, illusory. The Internet was a child of the 1960s finally all grown up, and it was about as new as LSD. And, like the notorious psychedelic elixir of the era of free love, flower power, and peace, those who partook of the Internet's dot-com drug in the late 1990s experienced an amazing and mind-bending experience that often detoured into a bad trip of bankruptcy, unemployment, ...