Author: Matt

“The Internet is an important cultural phenomenon, but that doesn’t excuse its failure to comply with basic economic laws. The problem is that it was devised by a bunch of hippie anarchists.”

Telecom consultant Thomas Nolle, somehow conflating dot-com business models with packet-switched networks (and we can’t wait to hear what he thinks of those open-source communists), Los Angeles Times, 26 July 2001

“The lesson here is you can’t expect users to learn. There’s too much fun going on out there on the Internet.”

Hurwitz Group analyst Pete Lindstrom, on the insidious appeal of the Sircam virus — perhaps the most amusing peer-to-peer file-sharing application developed to date, InfoWorld, 24 July 2001

“There are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second.”

Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos, on his company’s plan to keep its fourth-quarter profit as small as possible, The New York Times, 24 July 2001

“Nobody, 20 years ago, forecast the Internet.”

Lazy cyberpundit Bryan Appleyard, whose latest exhaustively unresearched screed took no note that it was 20 years ago today (give or take) Sergeant Postel taught the WAN to play, The Sunday Times Magazine, 22 July 2001

“For the time being, vendors continue to opt for price cutting rather than changing PC design to stimulate growth.”

Gartner analyst Todd Kort, blaming uncreative PC designers, rather than indifferent consumers, for the first-ever drop in worldwide PC sales, The Register, 20 July 2001