• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, September 7, 2005

What a demoralizing week for the nation. Shameful, really. Four years after 9/11 and our unpreparedness for a disaster, any disaster, was as conspicuous as it was nauseating. And what a twisted irony that we couldn't get to those Americans who needed help most, because the necessary resources were already committed to a war that's been left to those same lower-class Americans to fight.

This platform, I know, now calls for a transition to some list of lessons learned and how they apply to Internet advertising, but the only lesson here seems to be that we haven't learned any. The abysmal lack of leadership and preparation and the misuse of resources in the face of Katrina all have possible management implications for sure. But it would be crazy to think a marketing agency or rich media shop could replicate such negligence on a comparable scale.

But, what about the idea of unlearned lessons or lessons not learned? There's a concept Internet investors can relate to whether they know it or not. Why else would they be trading Google at close to $300 a share?

Several analysts have told me, at least in private conversation recently, that we are indeed headed for another bubble. They point to Google's management, which is in the process of buying its own stock. Why? Because it's overvalued, they exclaim. And, why are both Google and Yahoo! pursuing other industries and oversees markets so aggressively? Because each knows pay-per-click advertising in the United States won't sustain growth, the analysts insist.

Murdoch spending $580 million on Intermix's MySpace, plus the $2 billion he's vowed to spend on other acquisitions; E. W. Scripps putting down $525 million for Shopzilla; Gannett dropping $100 million for PointRoll; all the signs of irrational, unfounded behavior are there.

My own realization that a bubble might again be upon us came in the form of David Hayden. He and two associates stopped by recently to brief me on his new company, Jeteye Inc. His name sounded familiar, but it wasn't until I Googled him later on that I realized it was the David Hayden; the David Hayden who had co-founded the Magellan search engine back in the mid-'90s and featured prominently in Michael Wolff's cautionary tale of exuberance, "Burn Rate."

Everyone is familiar with the philosopher George Santayana's counsel, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," but I much prefer another one of his: "History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there." But, apparently Wolff and Hayden were there for the first popping and each burned badly in the process.

For me, the really chilling thought -- the one that keeps me up at night -- is the possibility that our leaders at the federal level knew exactly what they were doing prior to Katrina; that they had already calculated the necessary cost-to-benefit analyses and concluded that the lives that would be lost -- and now have been lost -- weren't worth the estimated cost of insulating the city from a category four or five hurricane.

To imagine a comparable degree of malfeasance occurring within our industry is crazy, I know. Regardless of scale, mistakes are mistakes and must be addressed in the here and now, lest they and the contexts in which they lie become just a pack of lies that never happened told by people who weren't there.