Technology Free-Riders

The financial thesis of representing increased volatility as increased risk is an apt consideration in looking at the current happenings of the market, but also the web. Along with this increased risk comes the enlightened idea that the commercial potential of the net still remains largely untapped.

The first flash of instability came in the explosive first-day gain of Netscape. Set to IPO at $14/share it made a $61 jump within the first day. With its goal of the commodization and leveling the playing field among operating systems Netscape was turned into a force that would end in a $4.2 billion AOL stock-swap valuation – only later to drop off into a part cyberspace antiquity.

Although early internet rebels foreshadowed a commercially driven arena, one of the surprising developments of cyberspace has been the manufacturing of the web through users rather than by corporate interests. While it was commercial interests that facilitated the space, its product has turned into a huge and organic positive externality. We are all free riders surfing this electronic wave.

Either way you see it, what has happened with this computing network hasn’t been in anyone’s ten-year plans. A seminal figure in the history of the internet, Ted Nelsen, envisioned a world of utopian benefits that would save us from our stupidity; obviously we are still a long way.

While little technological fetishism is okay, too much and you risk romanticizing the future possibilities instead of taking responsibility for them. As architects and consumers of the internet space, we are all leaders that gain a following by sharing. While a second-grader in 1993 could have imagined the year 2000 in a time capsule, to be a world of flying drag-racers and skateboards, we have to brace ourselves for something different, but also some of the same.