SPECTATOR CITY AND FINANCE

Since it has become clear that the Great Bubble of 1999–2000 is dead and not subject to resurrection, information technology has become boring. The limitless promise of a New Internet-Enabled Web-Architected Economy where Everything Is Different appears to have failed. In the United States, the voices that now command media attention range from that of Larry Ellison, founder and chairman of Oracle — who is acting out his stated belief that innovation in IT is over by threatening and launching hostile takeover bids to consolidate markets by liquidating competitors — to Nick Carr, senior editor of the Harvard Business Review, whose May 2003 article summarised its message in its title: ‘IT Doesn’t Matter’.

The spectacular surge and collapse of ‘New Economy’ share prices in recent years does, indeed, represent a turning point, and one of enormous economic significance. But Ellison and Carr and the host of like-sounding commentators miss the point so thoroughly that their laments call to mind the legendary comment by the great physicist Wolfgang Pauli on a draft that he was asked to review: ‘This article is so bad, it isn’t even wrong.