reading old ‘issues’ of suck thanks to a link by Dave Winer…
I really miss the ol’ cyncism/optimism of the early sprout of the web. On one side was the idealism and world changing mentality that made quite a number of folks very wealthy. Then there was ‘suck.com’, one of the first web sites i can remember visiting (yep, i remember life before the web, and how excited i was by the access to all that information). They’re cyncism was heroic, an attempt to look at the broader view, and look ahead to to all the dead dot-coms that have fallen. They were completely self-deprecating as well, and far more clever/hip than the onion will ever be.
Who would have thought ten years ago about the effect of Jerry Yang and David Filo. Amazing what a little vision will bring you. There were alot of ‘hereos’ in those early days. It’s now settled to a quiet yawn, with little bits of ‘yowza cool’ technology seeping through at rare moments (and no, the new iMac/desklamp does not qualify!!!) that are usually more subtle and evolve slowly over time. Something so taken for granted such as ‘apache’ or the lovely marriage of php and MySQL. These technologies didn’t emerge with a bang and a holler like ‘Java’, but their impact so far has been far deeper and influential, and much less influenced by the marketing dollar.
Perhaps its just the demise of Be. Another great idea born of that early optimism that was quickly despensed of, and will soon be auctioned off in ugly bits and pieces. I never did get a BeBox, but i did read every interview/article with Gassee that i could find. Back then what Negroponte had to say almost mattered . . . a little. But his impact seems mostly defined by the description of a ‘digital lifestyle’, whatever the hell that means . .