T. Liam Vederman (Boston, MA)

A cold wind blew down Third Street near San Francisco's PacBell baseball stadium. The mood was gloomy, not only because the city's beloved Giants had been beaten by the hated New York Mets, but the golden age of dot.coms had come to an end.

In the once trendy but now largely deserted bars and restaurants the scattered patrons expressed nostalgia for 1999. "You should have been here last year" lamented UX designer Paul. "The dot.com parties were great. People worked till 10pm, partied till 6am, and then went back to the office."

A panhandler on 16th St. going by the name of Ed reminisced on his previous career as the CTO with petdog.com. "Our customer acquisition costs killed us. We had to spend $7 on marketing to get somebody to buy one lousy dog biscuit."

"I had a great time, though. It sure beat working at the UVR call center."

Despite his misfortunes Ed has not been made cynical about the technology field. "I have another project that I developing but I can't give you any details now. Give me your card and I'll email you when the site is up."

What was it that people loved so much about the dot.com culture? Was it the ability to dress and act as if you were still in college while holding a job? Was it the chance to get rich on the fabled IPO? Or was it a lifestyle that was intrinsically more fulfilling than the conventional course. And if the dot.com life was so great why did it end? Did it hold the keys to its own destruction?

The reader may be shocked to hear this, but in our free market world money wasn't the most important thing for many of these ex-dot.comers. Many of the developers at least, said that they would have worked for free. They enjoyed programming because of the intellectual challenge, the chance to express their creativity, and the sense of craftsmanship.

You cannot understand the appeal of the dot.com culture until you have experienced the hell of the corporate office park. There a small number of competent employees do the work while being thwarted by a huge army of hacks and middle managers. Twenty five years ago there was not alternative to this lifestyle other then completely dropping out of society. When you graduated college you had no choice but to start wearing a suit and fighting your way up the corporate chute.

The California garage computer entrepreneurs such as Hewlett Packard, Apple and Sun Microsystems showed that there was an alternate path to success. Rewards could be earned on intellectual merit and technical innovation rather than skill at corporate infighting. This new type of business organization was very appealing to the masses alienated by corporate hierarchy, especially young people.

Over the past two decades the increasing importance of technology brought prominence to this previously obscure California tribal culture. Some of its practices such as PCs and casual clothing in the office were even imitated by other industries.

Like every other historical movement, the California computer culture reached its highest and purest expression right before its collapse. In its case it was the dot.com company, a technology firm based on marketing hype and colorful graphics pushed out over a TCP/IP connection. Such items previously deemed essential such as IC chips and hard drives were considered only auxiliary supporting components in this new schema. People jumped into the industry lured by the appeal of easy money but lacking any interest in the underlying software engineering work.

This past April the dot.com industry collapsed like a stack of floppy disks that had been piled too high. Many of the workers have left never to return. A few lost Chief Technology Officers, however, still wander the wind-blown streets of San Francisco dreaming of the day when their sites may be relaunched.