The telegraph was no exception. Cryptography, the enciphering and deciphering of messages in secret code or cipher, was a common hobby among Victorian men as the telegraph became more widely used. The Internet, to put it briefly, is far from cheap or user-friendly. It is unmistakably cheap and user-friendly when compared to the way it used to be, but not when compared to using television. The Internet is interactive unlike the passive medium of television, and there may, in the end, be no more demand for the Internet than there is for print media, which in itself is a declining industry.
Booms tend to have an unhappy history of coming to abrupt ends.
To believe that this technological revolution will progress endlessly without problems is to ignore one of the core lessons of business history. The hype will come to an end. It may not be next year or the year after, but what goes up must eventually come down.