Now removed by several years from the internet bubble, we should begin to have some profound thoughts about that experience. Fast Company asked several luminaries for their views:

* Sue Bostrom (Cisco Sr. VP): "Internet productivity is real."
* Robert Shiller (Yale): "It's just hard to understand what's coming up."
* Jeffrey Dachis (former Razorfish CEO): "The 1990s were about greed, lying, and stupidity."
* Bob Paul (Covisint CEO): "Unless you have laserlike focus on the problem you're trying to solve, technology is irrelevant."
* Ann Winblad (founder Hummer Winblad Venture Partners): "optimism cannot outweigh execution."

These snippets are not entirely fair, as each of the respondents had more to say, but I find it intriguing that we could still be so ambivalent about the lessons from the 1990s. We recognize that the world is not the same as it was before -- that it is, indeed, dramatically different because of the internet. Nevertheless, we also recognize that change is not inherently good and that many people can be harmed by the process. In short the triumphalism of the 1990s is largely gone. Robert Shiller expresses the angst that many of us feel:

I'm sure there will be more Bill Gateses -- really rich people who are not rich today. But I don't know if that is going to affect the whole economy favorably. I worry about millions of people being left behind and falling in their standard of living. I think that widening gap may be the most important issue of this time.

Me, too.

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