Friday, April 05, 2002


For those who think that the dot-com age was bereft of any upside (and depending on the day of the week I often feel the same) this story of Thomas Edison's Menlo Park details stories of 100 hour work weeks and employees sleeping ON their desks...work habits eerily familiar to those who lived in the bubble. I wish I had been inventing batteries and phonographs instead of selling books and lawnmowers. but I guess we can't always get what we want, can we?

I particularly enjoyed the discussion of the roles that investors played, and how their unwillingness to extend research and innovation led to headbutting with Edison's group...the oldest story of the dot-com era is, in fact, the oldest story of technology itself.