18-Mar-2002
Excerpts: Not all technology revolutions of the past exhibit manias and crashes. (...) Railways and canals, like the Internet, are connection technologies. They connect places, they connect businesses. As such they are natural monopolies -- only one line, or one canal, can profitably connect Liverpool to Manchester, and once this is put in place, competing lines lose. (...)The result can easily be an investment frenzy -- a mania. (...) But with or without manias, all revolutions still progress from early chaotic innovation to buildout, and then to tired overcapacity and foreign competition.
- Is the Information Revolution Dead?, W. Brian Arthur, Business 2.0,: March 2002