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about Asia Buzz
Asia Buzz: Instant Experts
Watch out for Internet "gurus" spouting tech talk
By ERIC ELLIS
May
18, 2000
Web posted at 1:00 p.m. Hong Kong time, 1:00 a.m. EDT
It's really getting boring--all this tech talk. In my house, it has been virtually banned by my wife. When I get excited by a new gadget or gizmo, she starts making curious snoring sounds, or starts patting Tigger, our cat. Fortunately for our relationship, I don't point out the irony of her "remark" when she goes upstairs, with the cat, to check her e-mail. I even suspect T.i.g.g.e.r is one of her passwords.
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But I have to admit, she has got a point. It's becoming increasingly difficult these days to go to a dinner party or casually chat with a friend or a relative and not talk tech in some way. Naturally, some people embrace it with enthusiasm and are true gurus, people from whom much can be gleaned. Others of the more Luddite persuasion are nevertheless savvy enough to know that tech talk has migrated enthusiastically from the nerd pages to the business section and now the front page, and there's got to be something in that.
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But tech bores are odious, particularly late-in-the-day ones for whom Macintoshes were, until recently, things that kept rain off Scotsmen. I was at a dinner last week when someone asked--between the soup and the starter--what we thought was the most popular term used on the Net. Sex, one of his guests ventured. Cool, or kewl, said another. "Nope, it's MP3," he offered triumphantly.
What a guy! It was like a flat punch line to an elaborate joke. But you could tell that his guests were unsure of what to say. So we nodded sagely. Our host had established a dubious "expert" status among his guests, most of whom knew little better anyway. (If he really wanted to show off how much of an expert he was, he'd have added what MP3 stood for--Moving Picture Experts Group-1, Audio Layer 3, as it happens.)
Instant experts are great fun. The chairman of a Hong Kong incubator recently told me with a straight face that he was a "Net pioneer" and that he had "got it" very early on How so, I asked. "Because I've been using Compuserve since the mid-1980s," he replied. That's obviously why he'd been an investment banker until six months ago. And Compuserve wasn't on the Internet then anyway.
The China.com people put out a similar argument, saying that they have been around as an Internet company for more than five years. It's true, to a point. China.com sprung from a failed effort by Beijing's communists to PREVENT the Net from reaching their populace, thus preserving their grip on power. Nothing particularly visionary about that. But these are details, mere details on the road to NASDAQ and tycoon fame.
An eloquent statement of how much of a tech guru or pioneer you are is evident in how early you registered your Internet domain. Do a history search on Hp.com or Apple.com domain registration and the registry dates back to 1986 and 1987 respectively. That's pretty early.
But tap in Pacificcentury.com into the Net registration database and you'll get info on a mail-order bride site based in Kansas City. Has Richard Li branched out into, er, human resources? Or is it a procurement site for millionaires' girlfriends now that his last squeeze, Karen Lam, has fallen out of favor?
No, someone registered it in March 1996, about the same time that self-styled major visionary Richard Li was cranking up a Very Old Economy Hong Kong insurance company. Li had to settle for the cumbersome Pcg-group.com for his corporate home site. Not exactly catchy, or obvious. Or visionary for that matter.
So next time someone mouths off as to how much of a guru they are, and you are a little dubious, ask them a couple of innocent questions--and then kick back and enjoy the squirming.
Eric Ellis is the Southeast Asia and technology editor of web-based finance portal AsiaWise.com
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