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Comment by matt__rose | Hacker News Reader

Oddly enough, that's exactly what people were saying last time there was a tech bubble. "This isn't a bubble, it's a paradigm shift!" See http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.09/zeros.html for kk's version of this post from Sept. 99, only months before the bubble burst. Also about when I stopped reading Wired.

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Haha Wired was crazy. There were a handful of other ones which were just as bad (Fast Company is another one that comes to mind).

It's also not just tech bubbles. The recent US housing bubble (when housing prices would never go down, because shut up that's why), and China's real estate bubble are great examples.

Andresson didn't say anything close to "you'll be a millionaire soon [and] so will everybody else." He just said the technology market isn't going to implode again. There's a difference. I think his basic point is valid: that computer technology provides a real and highly valuable service, unlike, say, tulip bulbs. Therefore, while it may be overvalued, there is nevertheless something solid there. Unless you think people are going to stop using the internet soon.

That is the exact same argument that KK was making in that Wired piece. Quote:

  How many times in the history of mankind have we wired the planet to create a single marketplace? How often have entirely new channels of commerce been created by digital technology? When has money itself been transformed into thousands of instruments of investment? It may be that at this particular moment in our history, the convergence of a demographic peak, a new global marketplace, vast technological opportunities, and financial revolution will unleash two uninterrupted decades of growth.

I don't think it's exactly the same. The tone in the Wired piece is way over the top, "hyperaffluence" and what have you. Can you see the difference between saying "Everyone's going to be rich! All our problems are solved! Utopia is here!" and saying "the technology market will continue to be a reasonably sound investment" ?

seems like more or less the same message. We are in a new era now, the fundamentals of economics have shifted because we say so and everyone should donate their life savings to our cause!

Style note - embedding a few spaces causes most of the text to scroll off into the right - for long quotes like that, better to put them in emphasis asterisks to set them out.

Of course that's what people were saying during the bubble. That's what people say during every bubble. If people weren't saying "this is not a bubble" then there wouldn't be rampant buying and it wouldn't be a bubble. Denial is a necessary component.

However. That does not mean that denial implies there's a bubble. We must evaluate each case on its merit. Every bubble will be surrounded by lots of people saying "it's not a bubble". But so will every non-bubble. That statement alone tells us nothing.

Wired is basically Rolling Stone for techies.

Sometimes there are good reads, though.

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