Boo!

The Haunted Economy

By Ian Shoales

The Silicon Alley Daily arrived safely in my inbox on February 1. Just so I won't have to, SA Daily covers all things digital out the New York way, even expanding its scope this year to cover "more of the media, finance, and technology firms that are leveraging the Net." (Despite my brief but total immersion in the New Economy, I still have no idea what "leveraging" means. I think it means if you put your Happy Meal toys up for bid on eBay, you're "leveraging" them. I could be wrong.) The editor also noted that SA Daily's "coverage of the dot-com deathwatch has been brief. Of course, we still cover the layoffs, but we don't focus our editorial resources there."

Phantom Ads

In the next breath, as if to sneer at what the editor just wrote, SA Daily reporter C.J. Hughes covered an unmistakable aspect of the "dot-com deathwatch." Hughes wrote, "For months after their demises, ads for such ill-fated e-businesses as Angryman.com and Modo festooned phone booths, brick walls, and tunnel entrances. Because many of the vanquished had purchased long-term outdoor media space, the ads stayed in place. It was enough to assume that the companies were still up and running."

Ghost billboards: way creepy. Yet another reminder that hyperbole alone does not make a New Economy.

Hughes' story went on to note that New York Assemblyman Richard Gottfried wants to avoid this signage problem in the future, by forcing "companies to set up interest-bearing accounts specifically to pay for the sign's removal, in case they go belly up."

How far the mighty have fallen.

Just last year the public sector scrambled all over itself to, uh, "leverage" the Internet. We must wire the classrooms! Build a bridge to the 21st century! Everybody must get wired! It's a digital revolution! Nobody can be left behind!

Well, now we've all been left behind. And while we seethe in gridlock (some things never change!), we don't want to see billboards for defunct dot-coms reminding us that we missed the damn boat, now do we?

Kaplan's Revenge

One of the most talked about Web sites right now is one I can't name in a G-rated magazine. Run by a fellow named Philip Kaplan, this Web site-that-shall-remain-nameless runs a kind of deadpool for publicly traded companies. It's a "dot-com deathwatch" that has proven so popular, rumor has it he may take it public.

That a guy who runs a Web site devoted to gloating over corporate flameouts replaced Jeff Bezos in our heart of hearts is proof enough that the dream is over. Bezos himself, as paraphrased in The New Republic ("Fall to Grace," January 29, 2001), once compared the New Economy to the "dawning of the Cambrian era, when multicellular life first appeared on earth." Well, the billboards left standing are like museum dioramas of dinosaurs at the watering hole. It's only been a year, but already the New Economy seems quaint. Oh look! A Web monkey and his mocha! And there's a Civil War general! And a French king!

The zeal with which we relish the downfall of the New Economy is rather alarming. I confess that I could never quite suss out the New Economy from the get-go, but where were all these alarmists back then? Again, here's The New Republic: "'Experience is finally getting some revenge on youth,' cheered The Wall Street Journal, noting that 'stodgy old grown-ups were once again in demand.'"

Leveraging Energy

Maybe that's why the reaction to California's energy crisis is so unsympathetic. President Bush and his new crew of stodgy grown-ups have made it clear that they mean to let us stew in our own juices. (Of course, that's not much of a threat really. If the power goes off, the juice we'll stew in will be pretty darn tepid.) The closer we get to elections, however, I'll bet Republicans will be throwing megawatts at us by the truckload.

But for the time being, the rest of the world seems to think that California spent the last decade cutting deals on cell phones while hacking code from the Jacuzzi. That business model failed. And now we must pay.

It's ridiculous, I know, but the world seems to think that the failure of the New Economy is tied in with the energy crisis. When the dot-coms went down, they took the electricity with them. They just sucked all the energy right out of the room.

Come to think of it, those billboards from failed dot-coms might make a fuel source for the dark days to come. Could we leverage those, do you think?

Ian Shoales shivers in his San Francisco hovel, where he writes his satirical pieces on the back of an old rusty shovel with recycled coal.