Arctic Monkeys and Another Thought

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am no music buff – much less rock music – and will wonder why I am talking about a rock band suddenly.

Because, I celebrate the Internet!

I am keenly watching what Internet is doing to the ‘copyright’ industry.

I was on the receiving side of the dotcom bubble bust. But always believed the Internet was far from dead. I still remember a very skeptical friend told me that the day I buy grocery online, that will be the age of the Internet. He said that no so long ago – in 1996. And, here we are, every time I order my month’s supplies from Tesco online, I do recall the statement.

So, what is there about Arctic Monkeys?

They are a Sheffield Indie band, which has gone onto release the fastest selling rock album ever in history! The buzz is – 2006 is going to be the year of the monkey! Wondering why you have not heard of them yet? They are the first mega-band [brand] of the download generation – and promoted themselves on the internet to start with.

The dotcom bust – if you want to return to this subject – was more of a demonstration of failure of greed-capitalism. This has happened many times before, most notably in 1840s, that time it was railways, and did anyone think that the age of railways were over after the bust in 1840s?

In fact, I will make an uninformed comment [before my economist friends come back with data and arguments] : any major technological innovation in modern history – I mean the era changing ones, the ones Joseph Schumpeter would have identified as having long term impact – immediately brought forth a bubble of speculation and a terrible fall, mostly at the cost of lay investors.

While technology has changed our life enormously, such speculative bubbles always robbed commoners’ resources and accumulated it with the profiteer [I can think of Railroads, Automobile, Internet off my head]. So, when someone talks about ‘what is the next billion dollar idea?’, I see next hoard of robber-barons waiting in the wings.

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