Two new books consider this history. “Dot.con,” by The New Yorker’s John Cassidy, is a well-reported take on the bubble which reminds you what happens to people who forget the past. By contrast, in “Going Wireless,” Jaclyn Easton actually needs you to suspend disbelief. A radio-show host, Easton writes about a world where wireless technologies like cell phones and pagers connect customer to front office to back office to warehouse, saving time and making money… just like things were supposed to happen in 1995.
Cassidy explains the downfall of Net stocks with the perspective of a historian. Nobody in a speculative bubble ever recognizes it. Overvalued dot-coms? The tulip craze in 1630s Holland had the same hype and valuations. The British railroad bubble of the 1840s produced dozens of publications, just like the dead New Economy magazines. The 1990s featured Internet stock analysts who’d lose theirjobs if they went bearish but become CNBC stars if they were bulls. The Fed didn’t raise interest rates, the press was too credulous and venture capitalists couldn’tget past groupthink. But the only things that now turn a profit online, Cassidy points out, are financial information and porn. Yet, once upon a time, a company thought it could sell cat food–with a puppet.
Easton shares few of Cassidy’s laments. She’s a breezy read, and her book expends much space flacking goodies on her own Web site. But judging by her unceasing flow of anecdotes, she really does think that wireless gadgetry will revolutionize the business world. Radio-frequency identification tags? They’ll do inventory control and speed visits to the gas pump. Traveling salespeople will access inventory in real time. And wireless PBX phone systems will turn your cell phone into an office cordless when you’re in your building.
How to reconcile Cassidy’s grim past with Easton’s rosy future? Well, at least the technology in “Going Wireless” exists in a deployable form, which is further than many dot-coms got. It’s not hype to build infrastructures that let employees keep in touch with each other and with customers. By golly, it’s called management. The final chapters of “Dot.con” describe one failed company after another. It might be enough to make anybody skeptical. But then again, getting e-mail on a Palm handheld in a bar or at the beach is, well, really cool. Maybe Cassidy and Easton both have part of it right.
