Or maybe the contest was just cool. Actually, that's frightening dedication. We hear this contestant later stuck his hand in the fire because he thought Richard Nixon had asked him to. But wait, there's more. Not only did all contestants find ingenious ways to build complete sites in less than 5K, many actually created sites that were emotionally moving, visually dazzling, sardonically pointed - or all three.
Limitations are the soil from which creativity grows.
Since it is possible to do so, and since doing so serves both the audience and the medium, we ought to do more of this, and less of what we usually do. If we really believe in the web as a powerful, dynamic, and democratic medium, let's put our money where our bandwidth isn't.