Notes from the Epicenter: Getting Back to Basics
Did anyone hear that loopy “ray of light” speech Al Gore gave the day before the election? The one where he, obviously feeling the effects of prolonged sleep deprivation, droned on about how we could wake up the morning after the election to sleet and grayness and the paper on the front step being so soaked through that half of it sticks to the porch, or that (option number two) we could wake up to rays of sunshine, birds singing gleefully, and the newspaper pleasantly dry to the touch? It was one wacky speech, but then it turned out to be one wacky morning here in digital San Francisco.
Tuning Out
Most people in San Francisco switched off their TV’s when Bush was named the next president. And most of us woke up to the extreme confusion of a presidential race that is still (as of this writing, two days later) too close to call. A friend joked, as we watched the news the other night, that just as we have gotten used to the network logos’ permanent residence in the corners of our TV screens, so we would have to get used to the words “Presidential Race: Too Close to Call” as they take their place along the bottom.
But, as I was saying, things are wacky here in dot-com world. Proposition L, the San Francisco ballot measure that will limit further construction of dot-com (and other) office space in residential neighborhoods (and, I suspect, put a crimp in Macromedia’s plans for a block-long complex in the heretofore quaint Potrero Hill district), passed by a narrow margin (though for some time it too was “too close to call”). The competing Prop K, placed on the ballot by our development-friendly mayor, was defeated. This, of course, is good news for San Franciscans who don’t want to wake up to another wacky morning a few years from now to find thousands of square feet of empty former dot-com office space littering our fair city. But, I’m starting to wonder, is this something we should still be afraid of?
From Boom to Doom
As I watched TV last night (when the world’s on pause, there’s nothing better to do than stay glued to the set), most of the local San Francisco networks, apparently with nothing left to say about the presidential race until Florida (of all places) finishes its recount, turned their attention to the business world. Apparently the age of the dot-com may be over.
Pets.com called it quits today. A while ago, I said I didn’t think the e-commerce market could support more than one pet products site. Turns out I was wrong: It can’t even support one. According to my local TV news staff, the only online businesses that are actually doing well are the ones with real-world (that’s “brick and mortar” in Webese) counterparts. The age of the IPO is officially dead (unless you have an actual tangible product), and no one with a halfway cool idea can even get funding anymore. Which strikes me as darned ironic when we’ve finally gotten around to regulating the growth of the dot-com contingent.
Blogging a Dead Horse
If you want further proof that the Web is moving away from e-commerce, check out the latest issue of the New Yorker, which features an article about the practice and culture of Weblogs, or “blogs” to those in the know. The New Yorker article centers around Meg Hourihan, author of the popular blog megnut and her blogger boyfriend Jason Kottke. Hourihan is one of the founding members of the San Francisco Web company Pyra Labs, which makes the free software program Blogger (makes it easier to blog) and which didn’t make loads money in 1999, the year of the IPO.
Could this renewed interest in the Web as a medium for imagination and communication (and from a major news magazine no less) signify a return to our Web roots? I, for one, hope so. I never understood how most dot-coms expected to make any money on the Web, but I know bloggers don’t expect to, and if you ask me that gives bloggers the advantage.
As the Web continues to evolve (or devolve) and as we continue to search for the things that are good and useful and fulfilling about our electronic medium, it’s nice to see the focus shifting back to the personal and to the real world, and to communications, which is what they invented the Web for in the first place. And as more dot-coms go the way of Pets.com and San Francisco slowly falls back into the hands of the San Franciscans, and we all begin to pick up the pieces of this wacky election which may well cause a national reexamination of the way we do things, there is no doubt that in this particular time, we are watching history happen.
Read more by Andrea Dudrow.
This article was last modified on January 8, 2023
This article was first published on November 14, 2000
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