POINT AND SHOOT, WITHOUT THAT PESKY POINT

“Imagine a corporate buyer navigating a virtual marketplace with a Doom-like user interface — buyers could simply shoot the deals they want.”

Forrester research director Carl Howe, on new technologies that will make videogames feel like work, Internet.com, 17 May 2001

WE PUT THE “LESS” IN “WIRELESS”

“The problem meant you’d have an unmobile mobile phone, so that’s no good.”

BT spokesperson Roger Westbury, on a glitch that caused advanced 3G phones to go kaput while performing the decidedly 1G function of placing a voice call, Computerworld, 15 May 2001

THE MEANS JUSTIFY THE SPENDS

“There were a lot of things done when the Internet was flying high that people think about differently in retrospect.”

Patti Hart, Excite@Home’s fourth CEO in five years, whose first week on the job was spent dealing with a teensy $75 million cash shortage that her new employer neglected to tell her about while she was being interviewed, San Francisco Chronicle, 14 May 2001

CHANGE IS BILLABLE

“The real lesson here is to recognize that the technology itself is of a transformational nature.”

Chunka Mui, DiamondCluster’s chief enervation officer, who’s still charging high hourly fees to tell people, yet again, that the Internet changes everything, The New York Times, 13 May 2001

THE NEWTON ECONOMY

“The reigning notion today is that the laws of economics are not, after all, suspended in cyberspace like the laws of gravity in outer space.”

Slate editor Michael Kinsley, showing that the comp-sci majors he’s hung out with for the past five years haven’t rubbed off on him, Slate, 10 May 2001