A brief history of internet time. (Metaphors in Action).

RAYMOND GOZZI, JR. (*)

The second half of the 1990s experienced a "dot-corn boom" in the stock market and the media. Internet startup companies, with web addresses ending with ".com," were the hot commodity of the day. Fortunes were seemingly waiting on the Internet for anyone smart, or quick, or lucky enough to find them. It was a gold rush in cyberspace. Investor money flowed into companies which barely existed, and which had never shown a profit. As it turned out, many of them never would make a profit, and by 2001, the dot-coin boom had gone bust. Some were calling it the "dot-bomb" economy.

The dot-corn boom was a heady mixture of money, stock prices and stock options, paper fortunes, computers, and the Internet. Those swept up in the swirl of events came to experience time in a different way from the rest of us. They called it Internet time.

The phrase Internet time is a metaphor for a different pace of life, even faster than our already sped-up lifestyles. Internet time defined a new layer of existence, pulsing to the beat of a different drummer. It was most keenly felt by those trying to make money off the Internet, or those trying to develop technologies for the Internet, which were often thought to be the same thing.

Specific definitions of Internet time vary, although its metaphorical structure is constant. As a metaphor, Internet time is a proportional metaphor: Internet time is to real time as fast is to slow. But how fast?

The most common measure compares Internet time to dog years. One year of our time is like seven years to a dog, the theory goes. Similarly one year of regular time is like seven years of internet time. But Internet time is not so easily measured -- some people give longer or shorter periods for a year in Internet time.

The London Sunday Times, for example, noted "we now operate in Internet time, where trends that once lasted decades take place within a few years or even months" (Jay, 2000). Another example comes from a Washington Post story about an executive in August, 1999. The executive was trying to decide whether or not to wait until October, 1999 to launch his company's web site -- "an eternity, in Internet time." An advisor tells him to start the site now, even if it is not completely ready. "Let it go quickly, get some experience in the market ... When we revise it, we can turn on the PR engine, start to get some attention" (Streitfeld, 1999).

The metaphor began, as far as I can track it down, at Netscape, one of the first dot-coin startups. A Netscape engineer named Tom Paquin asked fellow employees how long they had worked there. The answer at the young company was invariably a few months. How long did it feel like? A year. So Paquin coined the term Netscape time (Andrews, 1997).

Netscape was truly swept up in a time warp in 1994. A new piece of software called a browser had been developed by some graduate students led by Marc Andreeson in late 1992 and 1993. They posted the software on the Internet, and got instant feedback, suggestions, and bug alerts, allowing them to improve the "Mosaic" browser. This process illustrated one of the foundational aspects of Internet time, the "ultrafast development cycle that characterizes the entire Internet industry ... in large part a consequence of using the Web to distribute and receive information and technology about the Web, including software, specifications, documentation, source code, and comments from users" (Ferguson, 1999, p. 51).

Andreeson and others formed Netscape in 1994 to commercially develop the Mosaic browser. With its graphical user interface, this software opened up the Internet to ordinary people. You could just click on a hypertext link, and move to another page automatically. Mosaic kept track of pages you had visited, so you could get back again. Today we take such capabilities for granted, but it took imagination to visualize and construct the software in the first place. The potential was clear -- the software could revolutionize the Internet. But it had to get Out there fast.

In the mid-1990s the Internet was one piece of the computer world which was not controlled by Microsoft, IBM, or any of the other giants. They just didn't "get it," that the Internet would become a huge medium with millions of users. This created a window of opportunity for a small company like Netscape to move in with a new product which could define a whole industry. The principals at Netscape decided to roll out software faster than any company had ever done. The frantic pace of Netscape time was born.

As Netscape's browser spread to millions of computers in 1995 and 1996, the potentials of the Web became clearer. In 1995, Microsoft started taking the Web seriously. They began developing their own Internet Explorer browser to compete with Netscape's Navigator. The browser wars began, with rhetoric from both sides indicating that each would "kill" the other. Netscape executive Jim Barksdale famously quipped: "You have to run on Internet time -- or die" (Maney, 2000).

Internet fever gripped Silicon Valley in the mid-1990s. No one was quite sure what the Internet would become, and no one knew how profitable it could be. But if the technology kept improving, the thinking went, the Internet might absorb television, radio, and the entire telecommunications industry. People stopped talking about the information superhighway, which had been promised in the early 1990s. Now it was all Internet, all the time. By 1996, the metaphor Internet time had swept Silicon Valley and made its way into the press.

Internet time has been described as a "volatile mix of extraordinary opportunity, irrational exuberance, and blind panic" (Murphy, 2001). I did a computer search for the metaphor Internet time. Certain adjectives appeared regularly with it: "frantic," "frenetic," "a mania," "warp speed," are examples.

The pattern that began with Netscape spread to many other startups. The drive was to achieve a dominant market share, fast. Growth was paramount. All else could wait - profits, business plans, working infrastructure were put on the back burner. "When high-tech companies falter, it's often because someone else has exploited their market niche first. That's why the Internet mantra for start-ups is, 'Go as fast as you can, and then go faster'" (Streitfeld, 1999).

Hiring was also frenetic, as engineers and executives were lured away from more stolid firms with high salaries and stock options. Companies on Internet time demanded almost total commitments of time and energy from their employees. The cell phone and the pager became ubiquitous, keeping employees always accessible. Telecommuting now meant work could be performed on the computer at home as well as at work, not instead of going to work. The phrase "24/7" entered the language.

Internet time was felt around the world. In high-tech Singapore the lure of the Internet startups was felt by young scholars who had been sent to study in the United States. They were expected to return to Singapore and work for six years. The writer explained:

In my time, it was an honour to return and to serve. We did not live in Internet time. ... Today, six years is an eternity. ... If you are out of the industry for even six months, you have a hard time getting back in (Jin, 1999).

Internet time seemed to redefine all the old ways of doing business. This was marked by a flurry of "e-" words. It wasn't business, it was "e-business." Likewise we learned of e-commerce, c-tailing, e-mail, e-shopping, e-trading, c-banking, e-consultants, c-spaces, c-agreements, e-spacc, c-dating. There were c-books, c-pets, and c-drugs (Caruso, 1999).

Business plans were written for periods of less than a year, and re-written weekly at some startups. "The word from the Silicon frontier is that you can kiss your five-year plan good-bye. Or, for that matter, any plan that ends in -year. ... 'It used to be that the big ate the small,' (says a California venture capitalist), 'Now the fast eat the slow."' (Stepanek, 1999).

Success was measured by your IPO value (Initial Public Offering of stocks), which is usually just the beginning of the business, not the goal. Pride was taken in the burn rate of a business -- the amount of investor money they went through each month, or week. Advertising agencies tried to create "branding" for e-businesses in a matter of weeks, not the traditional years it used to take.

Not surprisingly, at such a manic pace, civility and politeness often suffered. Many dot-corn executives were recent college graduates who sometimes antagonized older business people with rude behavior. "'Off the record, some of these 20-somethings are idiots,' said one middle-age communications consultant. 'They have minimum experience and maximum attitude. They think they must be smart because they made so much money, but they don't even know the right questions to ask'. ... Another executive... blames short-term thinking for the rudeness. ... 'In new media, it's all about today, about this deal. These are not the sort of people who buy green bananas. They figure if they win today, they'll have $20 million, and then it won't matter if anyone calls them rude or unethical.'" (Tierney, 2000).

Of course, it couldn't last. The frantic pace could not be sustained. In late 1999 and early 2000 the money spigots were turned off, as the stock markets tumbled and investors had less cash to burn. Many startups with promising ideas but no profits had to shut down. Waves of layoffs swept through cyberspace-related companies. "This has been a bitter spring for Silicon Valley," wrote one reporter (Streitfeld, 2000). The rules of the old economy started to reassert themselves. A business advisor noted, "We were investing tens of millions of dollars to create brands, but what we thought were brands was just brand awareness. A sock puppet talking about pets is not a brand" (Streitfeld, 2000).

Just as the upward trends were accelerated on Internet time, so were the downward trends. Many dot-coins folded quickly. The remaining dot-coin stocks fell to a fraction of their former value. Tax time held a nasty surprise for some employees who owned stock options in those companies. Due to a quirk in tax laws, they had to pay taxes on the options' value at the time they received them. At the new, lower stock prices, even if they sold all their stocks, they could not raise the money to pay their taxes. Some former paper millionaires had to file for bankruptcy.

The browser wars ended with both sides bloodied. Netscape's fragile profits had disappeared when Microsoft began bundling its Internet Explorer browser with Windows software pre-installed on most computers. Microsoft also pressured computer manufacturers not to install Netscape's Navigator. Netscape, mortally wounded, was acquired by America OnLine. However, Netscape took Microsoft to federal court, where a judge eventually held that Microsoft had indeed used unfair practices in restraint of trade.

So is Internet time over? Was Internet time just an aberration produced by a specific confluence of factors at a particular time? Or will vestiges of Internet time remain with us permanently? There are arguments for both positions.

Certainly the economic euphoria and boom atmosphere are gone, and this provided much of the fuel for Internet time. Yet the Internet remains, and its potential is still probably largely untapped. E-mail and e-commerce continue to grow in volume.

The computer is increasingly insinuated into more areas of our lives. The peculiar time created by computers with their ultrafast operations has been called cybertime by Lance Strate (1996). Ultimately, Strate writes, cybertime is a complex multidimensional metatime, which includes real time as one of its dimensions. The phenomenon known as Internet time can be seen as another dimension of this multidimensional cybertime.

I wager that Internet time will not disappear. It may temporarily slow down or speed up, but we will be living with Internet time for many real years to come.

(*.) Dr. Raymond Gozzi, Jr., is Associate Professor in the TV-Radio Department at Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY. His most recent book, The Power of Metaphor in the Age of Electronic Media, Hampton Press (1999), is available from ISGS.

REFERENCES

Andrews, P. (Dec. 28, 1997). Internet Time Slows to a Virtual Crawl in '98. The Seattle Times. C1.

Caruso, D. (Aug. 16, 1999). Dot-Corn Crazes. New York Times. Available at: http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

Ferguson, C. (1999). High Stakes, No Prisoners. New York: Random House.

Jay, J. (Jan. 16, 2000). Day of Reckoning Looms for Cyberspace Emperors. Sunday Times (London). Available at: http://web.lexxs-nexis.com/universe.

Jin, J. K. (Nov. 16, 1999). Six Years is Truly an Eternity Now. The Straits Times (Singapore). "Life!" 4.

Maney, K. (Nov. 29, 2000). Does Internet Time March on or Has its Clock Been Cleaned? USA Today. "Money," 3B.

Murphy, C. (Jan. 22, 2001). The End of Internet Time. Information Week. Available at: http://web.lexis-nexis. com/universe.

Stepanek, M. (Nov. 1, 1999). How Fast is Net Fast? Business Week. "E.BIZ," EB52.

Strate, L. (1996). Cybertime. In, Strate, L., Jacobson, R., & Gibson, S., (eds.). Communication and Cyberspace. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 351-378.

Streitfeld, D. (Aug. 25, 1999). Meet the Virtual CEO. The Washington Post. "Financial," E01.

_____. (May 27, 2000). In Silicon Valley, Seeing an Upside to a Dot-Corn Crash. The Washington Post. A1.

Tierney, J. (Jan. 29, 2000). Rudeness and Riches Dot-Corn. The New York Times. Metro, B1.