Dot com

Even mainstream, primetime narratives in the domestic sphere, for instance, now provide unremarkable reflections on the now naive and overly optimistic promises of cybertech, the high-techs, and dotcoms.

Dotcom mania was slow in coming to higher education, but now it has the venerable industry firmly in its grip. Since the launch early last year of Udacity and Coursera, two Silicon Valley start-ups offering free education through MOOCs, massive open online courses, the ivory towers of academia have been shaken to their foundations.

In an echo of the valuation methods used before the bursting of the dotcom bubble in 2001, its shares are priced not in relation to its profits or even its revenue but to its extraordinary growth.

The fear of being "dotcommed” was a powerful catalyst creating a reactionary environment.

When will your company get dotcommed?

Then Yuppies dotcommed the Banks.

In the tech world, all the talk of disruption has revived memories of the 1990s, when start-ups riding the first wave of the internet were seen as an imminent threat to many established businesses and the fear of being “dotcommed” was pervasive.