The Great San Francisco Exhale: Part 2 |
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| August 29, 2001 | By SuperDNE | |
Sometimes, in the things that got made, we saw spontaneity, synergy. We saw a different way for humans to interact. We saw possibilities of collaboration and cooperation. We heard that you can't make money by allowing people to build worlds for themselves, and we let ourselves be yanked beyond the reach of these possibilities; we left them to cranks and curmudgeons, those who have given up on money and progress.
Within, who among us did not feel the lure of it in some fashion? Who did not want to be a part of it? All local humans felt the pull; some resisted quietly knowing, others attacked. Some undermined, and some succumbed. Some went willingly blindly, others fled. Some kept their heads dead and pretended neither the thing nor it's pull on them existed. alt: We bought into a dream and hoped for the best; or we refused the dream and pissed on it; or we didn't notice the dream and didn't understand how it affected us. 
It looked like cell phones and SUV's. It looked like Palm Pilots and extravagant parties celebrating no-accomplishment. It looked like rent times four in five years (check figures?). It looked like Kansas, Nebraska, and Virginia come to see. It looked like the flush in the cheeks of a girl who sees who lover and realizes it's someone else. Like news, difference, progress.
Meanwhile, the journalists and the commentators and the analysts did their job of trying to accelerate whatever's happening. While it was hot, they tried to make it hotter (internet going to change the world, make us all rich, wait, make some of us rich). When it started to cool, they tried to make it colder (looks like a recession). They parroted our surprise, and regurgitated our fear. 
The statisticians eventually got through the hype, and their message, never a surprise to them (we are surprised
when we refuse to see and are forced to; we are more surprised when we refuse to be blind) scared the boards.
The executives got scared, the workers (contractors first, then regulars) got laid off (sacrificed?). Multiply. Then the realtors, software vendors, architects, office designers, and other first tier symbiots became afraid. The second tier-restaurants, retailers, entertainers came to know fear as well. We don't have to be afraid. |
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