The media business has invested a lot of money and hope in the Internet over the past three years. So far, it has been a disappointment. LAST year, NBC s Internet strategy was the envy of the media world. The American broadcasting network had started investing early and amassed a portfolio of assets while Internet share prices rocketed. Thus Victorian enthusiasts, acclaiming the arrival in 1858 of the first transatlantic telegraph cable.
People say that sort of thing about new technologies, even today.
Biotechnology is said to be the cure for world hunger. The sequencing of the human genome will supposedly eradicate cancer and other diseases. The wildest optimism, though, has greeted the Internet.