[12309] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Review of Michael Wolff's Burn Rate
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Thom Gillespie)
Mon Jul 6 20:10:57 1998
Date: Mon, 06 Jul 1998 16:28:23 -0500
From: Thom Gillespie <thom@copper.ucs.indiana.edu>
To: PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Michael Wolff created Wolff newMedia the publishers of NetGuides and
NetBooks, a 30 book series devoted to the internet. This excellent series
attracted money interested in 'going public' in the internet gold rush of
the early 90s. The idea was that if 'content is king' on the net it might
be a smart idea to combine Wolff's content with the technology of a search
engine company to create a market. A minor problem was that neither Wolff
nor the search engine companies were making more money than they were
spending. Their burn rates were very hot. Burn Rate reads like a cross
between Candide and Fear and Loathing in Silicon Valley. Burn Rate is a
mind numbing account of how business in done or not done in the age of the
internet on the internet where no one has any idea where the market is,
how they are going to take to reach this non-existent market and/or create
the market, nor what the return on investment will be, but that doesn't
stop multi-millions of dollars from changing hands at a dizzying pace. The
changing hands range from Wired, Time-Warner, AOL, CMP, Microsoft and a
bunch of short-lived non-entities we all remember.
Burn Rate is the total insider perspective. Wolff offers no theories or
answers but raises innumerable questions about what it means to live and
work in the age of the internet.
"Nobody knows what's going on. The technology people don't know. The
content people don't know. The money people don't know. Whatever we agree
on today will be disputed tomorrow. Whoever is leading today, I can say
with absolute certainty, will be adrift or transformed some number of
months from now. Whosoever screws with you will get screwed with, too.
It's a kind of anarchy. A strangely level playing field. The Wild West."
p. 268.
Wolff's background is in journalism and he does a great job here.
If Elmore Leonard wrote about technology he would have written Burn Rate.
Great read!
Wolff, Michael. Burn Rate. Simon & Schuster. 1998. 268p. ISBN
0-684-84881-3 Hardback. $25.00
http://www.burnrate.com
--Thom
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