When the market took its temporary tumble in August, I suggested to our editor-in-chief that we might look into what a dismal year 1999 could be for the communications market. LAN hardware was being commoditized, broadband access to the Internet had stalled, and the ill winds from the Pacific looked like they were going to make for wretched market conditions for some time.
A year-end retrospective changes everything and nothing. Market declines in early December made it unlikely that the Dow would hit 10,000 in 1998, but at least we seem to have avoided a general recession. Investment bankers at the Next Generation Networks conference agreed that there is almost no reason to invest in LAN technology any longer, but the boom in consumer access to the Internet may make the commoditization of the LAN irrelevant to economic health. And even broadband access appears to be coming to fruition, at least in the cable industry.
So I'm going to make a New Year's resolution not to predict doom and gloom before its time. I'll still pay more attention to The Economist's drumbeat warning of stock-valuation bubbles than to Wired's "Long Boom" nonsense, but I'll temper it with the admission that the economy is far too volatile to predict booms or busts with any certainty. The next couple of years are bound to be fun and frightening, but they may not bring a communications bloodbath.
In return for my reserved and conditional optimism, could I ask the techno-positivists to admit, just for the holiday season, that their jobs are a transitory and superficial part of their lives at large? Could we stop using startup stock options as a macho measure of worth? Could we universally reject the Unisys slogan, "We eat, sleep and drink this stuff" in favor of the assertion from folk singer Charlie King that "our life is more than our work, and our work is more than our job?"
Surely, the astonishing innovation taking place among Internet startups is giving rise to a revolution where broadband, always-on communication can be provided to virtually everyone on the planet, and such advances are filled with existential implications. But we have a real tool-fetish problem these days. The front-and-center role of e-commerce in the Internet revolution serves as a reminder that this is a revolution driven by consumerism.
This holiday season, drop the work and remember what it means to define goals through spiritual, cultural, social and political aspects of the self, rather than through your role as information developer. Enjoy the break.
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