With the bursting of the high-tech bubble, the prevailing social mood is shifting from Internet worship to cynicism. The attitude that "the Internet changes everything" has given way in some quarters to denigration of the Net as a fad-the citizen's band radio of the 1990s. Yet just as the early tone was overoptimistic, the new one could easily become unjustifiably pessimistic. To avoid overreactions, it might be useful to analyze what propelled the dot-com craze to the ridiculous heights it reached in 1999 and early 2000.

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