End of the Beginning: It is interesting to look back at the past five years, at all the hyperbole and the odd bubble that inflated around the Internet. I think the spirit of it infected anyone who was at all a risk-taker, even though one had to know that so much of it wasn't going to work. But unlike the relics of past follies, there is not much left at Desktop.com or Sixdegrees except 404 errors. No one should think that this is the end of interesting stuff on the net, anymore than the Web was the beginning of it. It may be a return to a more bottom-up Web... but we'll see.