Nineteen hundred and ninety nine was an insane year. Some go as far as to declare that it was a high point in the history of mankind. Others claim it brought irreversible changes to the way we think, the way we live, and the way we interact with each other. Maybe so, but I have yet to see any profound changes in my own life.

All year long, instead of simply enjoying the benefits of the "new economy," I was desperately trying to understand something that does not appear to make any sense whatsoever. With 1 day left before the Big Millennium Bash, I am still very much bewildered by this whole "Internet revolution" phenomenon.

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As the year began, we have witnessed the very concept of "high tech" being redefined. Not so long ago, crafting space ships and exploring elementary particles was referred to as "pushing the limits of science and technology." Well, no more of that pathetic nonsense. On the dawn of the Internet era, if it didn't say "dot-com," it was yesterday's news. For the "Internet generation," life became very simple - who needs to waste years studying for a Ph.D. when all one ever has to know about technology can be found in an "Introductory Guide to Visual Basic?"

Then in March came the big news about disastrous e-mail viruses, followed by numerous cases of Internet users' privacy being compromised. For some reason, there was no significant public backlash to any of these incidents. In fact, I don't know anybody who stopped using Microsoft Office, an application suite whose infamous macro interface still lacks any provisions for virus protection. Only a handful of people abandoned Hotmail after they have found out that their personal e-mail was being made accessible to the whole wide world. It almost gave me an impression that the public is willing to sacrifice privacy and integrity of their personal and business data for the holy cause of Microsoft-dominated unified computing.

Therefore, why would anybody in their right mind expect the same herd of people to suddenly jump ship in a hasty exodus from Windows to Linux is one of the greatest mysteries of 1999.

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For most of the year, it looked as if all those Y2K bug issues would bring certain disillusionment into the idyllic picture of computerization in general. Instead, for some strange reason, the public was more than willing to hand over hundreds of billions of dollars to fix what appears to be the dumbest oversight of the past millennium. Not only did we not get rid of the morons whose minds were too shallow to have any foresight whatsoever, we have once again sent them laughing all the way to the bank.

What the whole deal has left us feeling is deep resentment for technology in general. Even people who have overcome their fear of flying years ago, are starting to have hard time coping with this long forgotten frustration. How it was possible to initiate the hysteria and push the whole "Apocalypse Now!" notion onto the seemingly civilized late 20th century post-modern society is still beyond me.

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In the meantime, defying the wisdom accumulated over the preceding millennia, the rules of commerce appear to have been magically altered. For one thing, a business is no longer required to make money to be considered successful. In fact, turning a profit became, well… so passé. Even more bizarre is that a company's market capitalization became solely a function of the PR office's ability to spark excitement in the minds of day traders. A corporation whose spokesmen could utter the right buzzwords at the right time was bound to quadruple its stock price, regardless of whether it had any intellectual property, shipping products, or even a remote chance of ever providing a return on investment.

Another big trend of 1999 was "selling" free products and services, utilizing the so-called advertising-driven business model that is fundamentally absurd. It works something like this - X.com advertises on Y.com, which buys banner ads on Z.com, which in turn pays for space on X.com's site. In a nutshell, all we have is a bunch of Internet start-ups who are promoting each other's complimentary offerings, creating a perfect illusion of a multi-billion "virtual economy." There is obviously no money to be made here but if X, Y, and Z have enough IPO funds to remain afloat for a couple of years, their owners will have plenty of time to cash in on their artificially inflated stock holdings before filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The above was just one of the countless pyramid schemes that the gullible day traders were so happy to buy into. For them, the old-time professional investors with MBAs who kept issuing warnings about Internet stocks being overvalued hundred-fold, became nothing but an annoyance. Suddenly it was the day traders who became the perpetrators of the "new economy."

Thanks to them, Yahoo is now worth almost twice as much as General Motors, while having about a thousand times less revenue and bringing home less than half a percent of GM's income. And, let me remind you that Yahoo is one of those rare Internet companies that somehow manages to stay profitable. Now, Red Hat, which is explicitly prohibited from ever owning any intellectual property, is a whole different story altogether…

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And so I leave this turbulent year with a fair amount of skepticism — this big party cannot go forever. Clearly, The End Is Near!