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All Aboard The Technological Revolution

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the ding-ding-went-the-trolley dept.

fm6 writes "Our old friends at nytimes.com (click here to tell them how much traffic their silly registration system costs them) have a short but thought-provoking interview with economic historian John Gordon Steele. He compares the economic effect of the Internet to various other technological revolutions, especially the introduction of steam power in the early 19th century."

2 of 211 comments (clear)

  1. History repeats itself? by sllort · · Score: 1, Funny

    After Lindbergh flew to Paris in 1927, for example, there was a bubble in aviation stocks. People rushed in without even knowing what they were buying. It turned out that one, Seaboard Airlines, was a poetically named railroad. It wasn't an airline at all.

    How many companies emulated this paradigm during the dot-com boom? I think we saw ".com" tacked onto the end of every company in existence in the space of 2 years. As I drive down the main drag in town, I see furniture stores with ".com" on their 20-foot-high-letter signs! They define themselves by their Internet presence...

    As easy as it is now to sit back and make accurate historical analogies, I didn't see anyone doing it in 2000. All the same, he has a point.

  2. Important message to New York Times by Toddarooski · · Score: 3, Funny
    (click here to tell them how much traffic their silly registration system costs them)

    Dear New York Times Reader Feedback:

    It has come to my attention that you require reader registration to have access to your articles. Don't you realize that this costs you several opportunities to be Slashdotted every month? Other sites enjoy the pleasure of watching their service grind to a screeching halt whenever somebody on Slashdot finds an interesting article -- don't miss out on this wonderful opportunity!

    Slashdot readers are generally upper-middle class with lots of disposable income, and would be a very valuable commodity to your advertisers, if it weren't for the fact that 80% of them use banner ad blockers to block out all your ads, and the other 20% just write Perl scripts to grab your content directly.

    Anyway, I hope you take my words to heart and realize the sooner you make your content free and unrestricted, the sooner your site will end up on fuckedcompany and we can make fun of you for giving away all your content for free.

    Sincerely,

    A concerned reader

    There. I think that oughta do it.

    --

    "Do you expect me to talk?" "No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die!"