In the beginning, it was the hobbyists who sat glued to their desks in their bedrooms with copies of the electronic 'Softdisk', with their soldering irons cobbling together the earliest remnants of this revolution, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak although slightly nerdy were fundamentally hobbyists, passionate about their nerdy little world of IC's and building software that made dots move about on the screen.

Well haven't we all come a long way since those early days. We have enjoyed one of the greatest revolutions to ever confront mankind. In just 25 years a single generation has witnessed the emergence of a force that essentially embodies opportunities and tools that could and will no doubt play a significant role in the continuation of the human race, as it battles against the threats posed by rises in population, shortening of supplies, climate change, and man made pollution (in all its disguises).

So is it all about business? NO. It never was and never has been. Yet somehow when you read the latest tech blogs and tech articles in the media, they are obsessed with profits, takeovers, buyouts, venture capital rounds of investment, growth rates, page views, unique visitors, advertising revenues, sell outs, and then follows the emulators of the latest killer application, generally rehash's of someone else's idea with with a twaddle of ajax thrown in and a whopping 6 million USD to pay for the 'brightest' ninja coders Stanford just chucked out.

It's when it gets to this point that you just know it's going to go 'pop snap' once again. The first bubble was a ridiculous hostile takeover bid where the internet (long ignored by the mainstream) suddenly showed signs of making profit. Ignorant 'reporters' wrote double page spreads in popular newspapers blessing overinflated virtues for the likes of 'Last Minute.com' claiming they were threatening to take out the travel industry, paving the way for their later headlines which made all the worlds media as they sold out for a whopping 850 Million UKP (valuing the company on a par with WH Smith). Utter madness.

I was an early visitor to the Lastminute.com offices, housed on a floor above a retail chain on Oxford street, (London), 3 stories up in an open plan office, desks scattered about haphazardly, with about 20 ninjas busy at work, not even so much as a receptionist. Great little cottage industry yes, but company worth 850 Million clearly not by about a million miles.

So sure it all followed thereafter, the geeky little nerd world was thrusted into the limelight as the quickest place to get rich, and with it came the abandoning of the essential elements that fueled this force. Not that the hobbyists ever went away, rather their platform and hobby was hijacked by the city corporations who muscled their way into every conceivable crevice they could, like crazies buying up virtual real-estate in Second Life.

When someone got wise that these so-called companies essentially amounted to little more than online brochures that were NOT going to be taking over anything let-alone the world, rapidly we saw their demise. It was a sobering time, the money left the scene disgusted with its losses and I for one hoped they would never forget that lynching and forever leave the hobbyists in peace to continue their little hobby without the fanfare of these get rich fortune tellers.

Alas that was not to be, first we had Google, then Myspace, next up Youtube, then Facebook, all creating the buzz and hype that of-course could not go unnoticed. Now attention is back in full swing from all those sleazy cooperate masterminds that are back to corrupt the terrain once again. With them came yet another year of distortion and delinquency. The buzz and hype surrounding every penny made and lost in the race for the latest me-too, 'I got a social network too' has frankly been ridiculous.

So its the end of the year and quite obviously it's the end of many a wannabe billionaires dreams. As they slowly come to the last page of their cheque books, and without a dime in sight, they have no choice but to close the doors once again in a fashion we (hobbyists) are starting to get used too. They come and go like speculators in the great gold rush, and leave in their wake desolate buildings and give the auction companies fodder to peddle.

You see, a little word of advise to the speculators and bullies waiting in the wings ready to pounce on the next big thing. What drives this thing we refer to as the Interweb is a creative collective of hobbyists, who do not awake an night with the excitement from dreams of billions passing through their fingers, but instead with nerdy solutions to coding problems that might allow us to make a feature easier to use (for example) and thus more user friendly.

It's the hobbyists that are the brain power behind the big advancements here, and who rarely ever get any credit for their efforts. A case in point is the likes of the Thomas Fuchs the creator of script.aculo.us who has a little donate now button on the home-page of his site where he offers probably one of the most widely adopted Ajax libraries to-date which has been incorporated by many of the top 100 movers and shakers in the latest gold rush. All of which is offered open source and licensed under the MIT License. Yet you wont hear the slightest mention of him by the likes of TechCrunch totally oblivious as to who's shoulders upon their cronies stand.

As we all know donations are few and far between in the over saturated world of "who can give it away the quickest is the winner". So unlikely so, that I would be extremely surprised if more that 5K USD has passed through that little donate now button (thought of course I don't know). And yet all the while we read non-stop dribble about these valuations and investments into copy-cat 'social networks' (or what have you) that utilize the AJAX scriptaculous library.

It is only natural to copy, plagiarize, emulate, and be inspired by others success, why that is one of the fundamental forces that drives creation itself, and my problem is not with entities that are inspired by others, that use ideas others developed, or necessarily copy parts of systems for their own projects. However that generosity does NOT extend to the parasites who for want of nothing other than to make profit do all of the above, with millions in investment backing behind them and with the sole intention being to take out a potential market and long since will be forgotten those that paved the way with their ideas, creations, mistakes, and efforts.

more to come.