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You see, the first time I visited Cisco back in 1990, the entire company fit into a tiny office on the second floor of a building in Menlo Park, Calif. Today the company is growing so fast it could be considered an environmental threat. Its planned campus in south San Jose's Coyote Valley will house 20,000 workers and provide 22,000 parking spaces across 688 acres. And, of course, it's not just Cisco.

At this point, who would dispute that the convergence of computing and communications has created the perfect storm, one that blows away everything in its path? But did any of us see it coming? We treated the vision of a brave, new, networked world as gospel, but did we bet our futures on it and become gazillionaires? Nope.

So the real question is, why not?

Hemingway once said that what reporters need is a "built-in, shock-proof, shit detector." That's true. The problem is that the detector also functions as a chastity belt. We technology writers don't trust the people or the companies we cover; we're not supposed to. So when marketing gurus tell us the world is about to experience a seismic shift, we say, "Yeah, right." We quote them, but we don't believe them. At least not enough to bet the farm.

Well folks, maybe this time we should have bet the farm.

The column I wrote for the first issue of Network Computing in October 1990 was about how you don't trust vendors or the trade press--we'd held a focus group and discovered that you were cynics too. Based on that information, we endeavored to build a different, more credible magazine. Meanwhile, a bunch of young whippersnappers who didn't know any better swallowed the hype, bet their lives on it and retired by age 30. Oh well. At least we did the right thing by saving your companies from buying a lot of junk. But isn't it ironic?

Tim Haight is vice president, editorial content for OneChannel.net. He was at Network Computing for its first five years, most recently as executive editor. Send comments on this column to him at thaight@onechannel.net.