The internet is a series of tubes..

An extremely tech saavy old congressman once told me that the Internet is a series of tubes. Well in the late nineties the information going through said tubes was apparently VERY valuable.

In class on Monday we talked about the net bubble. It was interesting to listen to how it really went down. When all of this happened I was like 13 and just getting into computers. My dad bought a 3500$ Gateway as our first computer. It had a staggering 100 mhz and 16 megs of ram. I remember when websites were absurdly basic, and you had to deal with the slow internet that came as a result of a loud box making weird beeps.

I had no clue how crazy investors got. I remember hearing a bit about it, but I was young and didn't care. I drew a lot of parallels between it and the housing/banking problem we just saw. It really looks like greed is a terrifying force. Some of the actions described in the lecture were so absurd that I can't believe anyone could do that with a straight face. I mean I guess if you see an opportunity to become a millionaire in a month it will look great, but to justify it enough to say "meh who cares how many thousands of investors are investing in a fake company" is pretty heartless.

It really sounds like an exciting time to have been alive. I wish I had been a computer science major back then. I'm hoping to get a similarly crazy experience out of my late 20's.

-Caleb