Wired, September 1997 In September 1997, with the headiest years of the dotcom craze still to come, executive editor Kevin Kelly distilled a dozen principles for the upside-down logic of the new economy. The "rules" quickly became conventional dotcom wisdom, helping make a case for the, uh, unorthodox business models of the time. Surprise: Some still hold up — with a few tweaks here and there. Check out these three.
Embrace Dumb Power
Anticipating Web 2.0, Kelly saw a kind of organic intelligence forming in the links between "a trillion objects and living beings." But he focused more on things (from cars to cash registers) than people as the neurons in the emerging hive mind — a misstep he later corrected in "We Are the Web" (August 2005), an essay about mass collaboration.
Success Is Nonlinear
"For the first time we are witnessing biological growth in technological systems," Kelly argued. Success had become exponential — a function of feedback loops and tipping points. He noted that the same phenomenon can make for equally spectacular failures, unraveling network-driven empires "in a blink." Friendster much lately?
Don't Solve Problems
Kelly's assertion that any job with measurable productivity should probably be eliminated seems a tad harsh today. But his broader point was that innovation would spring from the "inefficient tinkerings" of people with time to kill, rather than from industrial-age efficiency metrics — a principle that has clearly outlasted the boom.
start Previous: 15th Anniversary: Nothing Says Reinvention Like "2.0" Next: Is There Any Country That Doesn't Have a Space Program?
