Comment Articles

The Internet -- adolescent or cowboy?

Tags:
B2C,
Wide,
Ecomony,
B2B

John McCright AnchorDesk

Published: 14 Jun 2000 14:24 BST

Think about the settling of the American West by Europeans. First there were the government-funded expeditions, like the Lewis and Clark trek to the Pacific (think Arpanet).

Then there were the money-making fur trappers who everyone thought were a little bit crazy (early e-commerce visionaries).

Then came the regular folk who just wanted a place where they could express themselves freely (the early adopters of Netscape's first browser).

Then legitimate business people as well as sharpies who wanted to sell goods and services to the regular folk arrived on the scene (B2C frenzy).

Finally, the law showed up -- federal marshals, territorial legislators and, eventually, many years later, local zoning boards (the Department of Justice and state attorneys general clamping down on Microsoft for tying its Web browser to its operating system, for instance).

People who think of the Internet as the Wild West shouldn't be surprised when Matt Dillon (as played by Janet Reno) tries to enforce a sense of order on the place. Of course, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is not known as a historian (and Matt Dillon was a fictional character anyway), so one has to expect some feathers to get ruffled.

I hear Gates uses the other popular metaphor, anyway, likening the Internet economy to the growth of a child from infancy to adulthood.

First there was the idea of the Internet that was conceived, like a test-tube baby, by a group of scientists (or Al Gore, if you like, but I'd rather not go there).

Little baby Arpanet was swaddled and nurtured in a small community -- a family, really.

Read on...