Dan WagnerFounder, Chairman & CEO, Rezolve Ai

Thinking & Writing

Twenty-five years of saying it early

In 2001, with the dot-com crash still fresh, Dan wrote a weekly column for the Sunday Express arguing that the internet's real opportunities were still ahead. Today the argument is about AI agents and whether they can be trusted with a transaction. The archive below runs from the newest posts back to the original columns.

Everything here carries its original publication date. Posts are imported from LinkedIn and X; the 2001 columns are scans of the printed page.

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    The eVangelist Sunday Express · weekly column · February to June 2001

    The column began three weeks after the Nasdaq had fallen by more than half from its March 2000 peak. Each week Dan took one corner of the digital economy that the market had written off, from online music and gambling to peer-to-peer networks, mobile data and the failure of early WAP phones, and argued that the underlying shift was intact even where the first companies had failed. The sixteen columns that survive in the archive are reproduced as scanned pages, with their original publication dates.

    These are 2001 newspaper columns and reflect the technology and companies of that moment. Any present-day commentary on this site is dated separately and never mixed into the original text.

    1. 01After Dot Com doom, hail the digital futureIn the debut instalment of his Sunday Express e-commerce column The eVangelist, Dan Wagner surveyed the collapse of dotcoms such as Boo.com, eToys.co.uk, UrbanFetch, ClickMango and Letsbuyit and set out five 'myths' of the dotcom era that had been shattered.Scan (PDF)
    2. 02Sound a fanfare, free Net musicDan Wagner's column responded to the Recording Industry Association of America's court victory against Napster, arguing that the ruling would not stop free music on the Internet.Scan (PDF)
    3. 03I'd bet my shirt on e-gamblingDan Wagner's column argued that Internet gambling would be a clear winner because, unlike shopping, few people enjoyed visiting a betting shop.Scan (PDF)
    4. 04They all know what you buyDan Wagner's column examined how Internet retailers such as Amazon.com gathered detailed knowledge of individual customers' buying and browsing habits, contrasting this with the anonymity of a High Street supermarket.Scan (PDF)
    5. 05Be safe, not sorryDan Wagner's column argued that banking and shopping over the Internet from home was safer than visiting a High Street bank or travel agent.Scan (PDF)
    6. 06Digital life is sweet in SwedenDan Wagner's column explained domestic broadband and sketched a future 'Wagner household' with video-on-demand, video-conferencing and online shopping, noting that Scandinavia had been voted the most connected digital economy.Scan (PDF)
    7. 07WAP's flop is key to the futureDan Wagner's column described WAP phones as the most disappointing technology innovation of recent years but argued their failure had expanded mobile telephony usage and pointed the way to third-generation (3G) mobile services.Scan (PDF)
    8. 08How e-mail can stop you going Laa-LaaDan Wagner's column praised e-mail for freeing him from the office, allowing him to work long hours from home and spend time with his daughter.Scan (PDF)
    9. 09Why not invest in a dotcom?Dan Wagner's column considered where investors might look after the technology crash, noting that London's Techmark index had fallen 52 per cent in a year and the Nasdaq had slid below 1,700.Scan (PDF)
    10. 10False start holds back ISPsDan Wagner's column argued that AOL's success proved there was no money in giving Internet access away for free, contrasting it with UK providers such as Freeserve, Virgin.net, Compuserve and btinternet.Scan (PDF)
    11. 11Salute P2P, the wired world’s next supernovaDan Wagner’s column looked at the growth of online communities, from Yahoo!Scan (PDF)
    12. 12Roll on 2011 and the e-CensusDan Wagner's column criticised the UK public sector for lagging behind business in adopting the Internet, contrasting the Government's e-Minister, e-Envoy and 2005 e-Government target with its slow delivery.Scan (PDF)
    13. 13It's e-business, not charit-eIn his eVangelist column, Dan Wagner argued that the open source software movement, which he likened to the anti-capitalist protesters in London, was in conflict with the commercial software industry.Scan (PDF)
    14. 14Pay tribute to Conan the LibrarianIn his column, Dan Wagner argued that information retrieval, a comparatively quiet industry, was transforming corporations from the inside while the media focused on Amazon, AOL, Dell and Cisco.Scan (PDF)
    15. 15I want to use Bill Gates's walletDan Wagner's column discussed consumer reluctance to enter credit card details online and the emergence of virtual wallets, praising Microsoft's Passport as the most convenient.Scan (PDF)
    16. 16We need serious retail therapyDan Wagner's column argued that Britain, Adam Smith's 'nation of shopkeepers', had fallen behind the United States in online retailing, with only one in eight of around four million UK retailers having a website and fewer than 2 per cent selling online.Scan (PDF)

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    1. 01Is the Net overhyped? The anoraks hit backThe Sunday Times · In a first-person article, Dan Wagner responded to Alan Sugar's warning against Internet hype, arguing that the Net was a serious business tool and that Sugar was behaving like King Canute.Scan (PDF)