O/T Amusing book
If you ever want to find out about bad forecasting and misreading the potential of the internet, for laughs I recommend a book called
"Future Consumer.com" by Frank Feather. It's not that easy to find, and is certainly not a big seller these days (#12,374 in popularity at Amazon.com), but is worth searching out in the discount bins of your local Chapters or at a good used bookstore.
The author, who claims to make a living predicting future trends, predicted great success and domination of the internet by firms like "furniture.com" which has now gone the way of ITM.
He also (seriously) predicts consumers will abandon shopping malls and stay home to do most of their shopping on the internet. Of course recent polls show North Americans make less than 1% of their purchases over the internet, and there are absolutely no signs that people are interested in giving up shopping at malls. (the author, clearly not a particularly social person himself, must prefer the company of his computer to other people).
But of course he covers his butt by saying this is all a decade away (when his book and predictions will be long forgotten).
Like many buyers of ITM, the author got caught up in the hype and general market frenzy surrounding the internet 18 months ago. You can't blame Mr. Feather for wanting to cash in while the market for such stuff was hot, but in the cold light of day, his fantasy is just that.
Anyone who bought the book must now feel like anyone who bought shares in ITM on similar hype and misguided expectations.
There are also some errors in the book which show the need for a decent editor.
The author provides a couple of contradictory figures relating to the pervasiveness of online stock-trading (which has fallen off dramatically since the publication of the book).
Mr. Feather also has a tendency to repeat himself endlessly when he latches onto a key phrase like the "always-on" web. Yeah, like we didn't know that!
The book was intended to help small investors pick which internet-related stocks would be good longterm investments, but unfortunately, as the demise of ITM shows all too clearly, trying to pick winners in this field is a mug's game.
The author has clearly borrowed ideas from some legitimate thinkers like Marshall McLuhan and Alvin Toffler and you would be far better off buying their books for an intelligent discussion of future trends.
But Mr. Feather's book is good for entertainment value, like buying a lottery ticket which allows you to dream for a few minutes about what might have been.
So see for yourself how misguided over-enthusiasm for something new and unknown can be. IMHO it relates directly to the high hopes and rapid disentegration of dot.coms. like ITM. Who knows, maybe the author, Mr. Feather even thought ITM was a good prospect for the future!
So buy the book for some leisurely bathroom reading and in the process maybe we can push its popularity up to #12,373.