[lit-ideas] Re: The Flying Spaghetti Monster

Ecommerce sales are now $21 billion (Q2/2005) and is about 2% of all US retail sales ($940B).

At the top of the dotboom, ecommerce was just under $5B. Ecommerce is now four times larger than the dotcom boom.

http://www.census.gov/mrts/www/data/html/05Q2.html

yrs,
andreas
www.andreas.com


----- Original Message ----- From: "Andreas Ramos" <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2005 9:02 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: The Flying Spaghetti Monster


The article that Andy cites below is a very good analysis of the dotcom boom/bubble/craze/irrational exhuberance.

Gilder, Wired, the Wall Street Journal, the Cato Institute, and many others fed this bubble.

I'll also add another group: the venture capitalists (VCs). They handed out literally hundreds of billions to marketing companies to create buzz, PR, ads (such as million-dollar Superbowl ads to shoot hamsters out of cannons), placement (buy articles in newspapers, magazines, TV shows), and so on. This funding was one of the specific drivers of the craze.

The web started in August 1995 and crashed in April 2000, almost precisely five years. The crash wasn't merely a correction; it was an obliteration of some 4,000-5,000 companies. Silicon Valley went through the worst recession ever.

In 2003, business began to grow again. By 2004, there was three times as much ecommerce as during the top of the boom (1999). Ecommerce recovered. By 2005, there is a tremendous amount of economic activity in ecommerce.

Yet... we don't hear about it. There's no "dotcom bubble" or "boom" now. Why? Because the VCs aren't giving money to marketing agencies, which aren't producing tens of thousands of articles, TV ads, billboards, and so on.

The bubble proved one thing: marketing can't create a product. Webvan, for example, got over a billion in funding and spent hundreds of millions in marketing. They never made a cent in profit. The $200 billion or so that was spent in marketing was unable to establish those companies.

Anyway, read the article that Andy links below.

yrs,
andreas
www.andreas.com


----- Original Message ----- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>; "lit-ideas" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2005 7:01 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: The Flying Spaghetti Monster


A handful of people fundamentally affected not only religion but economics
and politics as well.  George Gilder, currently in the forefront of I.D.,
also pushed the dot com craze.  I couldn't find the Frontline report on it.
As close as I could get was the following link.  How is it that in a
society where information is apparently so free, it is so easily and
massively manipulated?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/dotcon/bubble/frank.html




[Original Message]
From: Andreas Ramos <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Lit-Ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 8/30/2005 1:58:55 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] The Flying Spaghetti Monster

The Holy Site:
http://venganza.org/

More:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/29/arts/design/29mons.html?ex=1125460800&en=1
c637e97c4ef2678&ei=5070



yrs,
andreas
www.andreas.com


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