The New Tech Bubble

[Robin Landseadel]

I hope links work at this antediluvian website. This article from  
Salon has multiple resonances with BE:

"Is it time to get nervous? On Sept. 20, a pair of Silicon Valley  
start-ups enjoyed spectacular “pops” on their initial public  
offerings. Shares in Rocket Fuel, an advertising technology firm, rose  
94 percent, while shares in FireEye, an Internet security company,  
shot up 80 percent. Uh-oh! A headline in the San Jose Mercury News  
kicked off the hand-wringing: “Jaw-dropping stock debuts by FireEye,  
Rocket Fuel are already raising questions about a new tech bubble.”

There’s a good reason for jitters: If there’s one thing the San  
Francisco Bay Area fears more than a big earthquake, it’s the sound of  
a tech bubble bursting. Economic devastation is never fun.

And it certainly feels bubbly, to anyone who remembers what it was  
like the last time it got crazy. Traffic is getting worse, again. New  
gourmet restaurants, fancy beer gardens and high-end boutiques are  
proliferating. Unemployment has plummeted. Gentrification is in high  
gear. Rents are absurd. Enormous amounts of money, wielded with  
douchebag arrogance, are sloshing around town. Hell, there’s even talk  
that Kozmo.com, the same-day dot-com-boom delivery service that burned  
through $230 million without ever even making it to IPO day, is coming  
back.

The difference between earthquakes and tech bubbles is that the former  
arrives without warning while the latter comes accompanied by sirens  
and a motorcade that you can hear in the distance for years in  
advance. When it comes to tech bubbles, the Bay Area is always on  
typhoon alert. But the craziest thing about the current craziness is  
that the closer you look, the fewer reasons there seem to be to load  
up on survival gear and run for the hills. . ."



http://www.salon.com/2013/09/27/why_we_hate_the_new_tech_boom/-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l