15th Anniversary: A New Analysis of the New Economy's New Rules

Wired, September 1997 In September 1997, with the headiest years of the dotcom craze still to come, executive editor Kevin Kelly distilled a dozen principles
for the upside-down logic of the new economy. The "rules" quickly became conventional dotcom wisdom, helping make a case for the, uh, unorthodox business
models of the time. Surprise: Some […]

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September 1997 In September 1997, with the headiest years of the dotcom craze still to
come, executive editor Kevin Kelly distilled a dozen principles for the upside-down
just $5
logic of the new economy. The "rules" quickly became conventional dotcom wisdom, Subscribe now
helping make a case for the, uh, unorthodox business models of the time. Surprise:
Some still hold up — with a few tweaks here and there. Check out these three.

Embrace Dumb Power

Anticipating Web 2.0, Kelly saw a kind of organic intelligence forming in the links
between "a trillion objects and living beings." But he focused more on things (from cars
to cash registers) than people as the neurons in the emerging hive mind — a misstep he Most Popular
later corrected in "We Are the Web" (August 2005), an essay about mass collaboration.
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Success Is Nonlinear Google's Search Results
"For the first time we are witnessing biological growth in technological systems," Kelly Reece Rogers

argued. Success had become exponential — a function of feedback loops and tipping
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points. He noted that the same phenomenon can make for equally spectacular failures,
Le Creuset's Bread Oven Bakes Great
unraveling network-driven empires "in a blink." Friendster much lately? Loaves—for a Price
Joe Ray
Don't Solve
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Kelly's assertion that any job with measurable productivity should probably be Security

You Need to Update iOS, Android, and

eliminated seems a tad harsh today. But his broader point was that innovation would Chrome Right Now
spring from the "inefficient tinkerings" of people with time to kill, rather than from Kate O'Flaherty

industrial-age efficiency metrics — a principle that has clearly outlasted the boom.
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