Looking Back Ten Years, The Dotcom Bust Was Cruel

Two copies of Wired magazine arrived in my post office box on the same day. The March and the April issues, as usual, did not disappoint, but why they both came at once is a mystery. Inside the March issue was a colorful three-page spread about the ten years between 2000 and 2010, called “The Dotcom Boom, 10 Years After.

Once again the graphics of the magazine impress. This spread featured pull-outs that look just like the warnings you get in Windows, complete with gray background and the yellow warning exclamations, but instead of a Microsoft warning there are quotes from doomed dot-commers. Hubris was the theme here, the titles were snarky commenatary on predictions about greatness mocked by 2010’s realities. Leaders of Palm, the Time Warner/AOL merger, Enron were among the quotees, that look ridiculous today. Hindsight can be cruel, I realized after reading again and again about men who truly thought they would get rich and never did.