The networks would claim audiences of more than 800 million worldwide, but who could blame one for thinking it television's last hurrah? For in that epochal year, there was no denying that mass attention seemed to have migrated irresistibly to a new medium that had lately evolved into a form we would now recognize and yet was plainly still only in the infancy of its possibilities. The BBC had declared 1999 "the year of the Net," and CNN.com invited users to "uncork the bubbly, boot up the computer, and usher in the new era in an appropriately futuristic way."

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 857