All Aboard The Technological Revolution 211
fm6 writes "Our old friends at nytimes.com (click here to tell them how much traffic their silly registration system costs them) have a short but thought-provoking interview with economic historian John Gordon Steele. He compares the economic effect of the Internet to various other technological revolutions, especially the introduction of steam power in the early 19th century."
In a true revolution (Score:1)
Re:In a true revolution (Score:1)
double meaning (Score:1, Insightful)
1) a revolution, like of the earth of a spinning top or whatever, comes back to the same position it started in
2) historically, many revolutions have just replaced one corrupt regime with another. even the US seems to have accomplished this, many years after 1776.
whoami (Score:1)
The required no-registration link. (Score:1, Informative)
Re:The required no-registration link. (Oops, typo) (Score:2, Informative)
Hmm - comparison (Score:1)
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't we see a whole bunch of things like steel plants and railroads and fun stuff like that take place and a whole bunch of people got REALLY loaded?
Now, the net. So far, we just had some people get really loaded from overpriced IPOs.
I think that more of the businesses had better business plans.
I agree that the net has had a huge economic impact and that it will continue to do so, but if these net companies don't get some things in order - we'll see.
Yes - the net changed the way most of us live. Yes, it did make some wealthy people (they weren't as wealthy as some from the industrial revolution though - even Bill pails to some of them)
my
Re:Hmm - comparison (Score:2, Insightful)
At least with the Net the wealth that's been distrubuted has been a bit more equitable. Granted, nobody went from living on the street to
Re:Hmm - comparison (Score:2)
Not true (Score:1)
The industrial revolution did by NO MEANS make the common man poorer. In fact, the mean streets of Dickensian London were a paradise when compared to the middle ages before the 'evils' of industrialization took hold.
It's easy to look back after the Industrial Revolution and point out how bad things were in the beginning, but you make the basic logical error of forgetting that the very wealthy life that every average American enjoys today is due PRECISELY to the efforts of the 'evil' businessmen who went out and built the steel plants, and railroads.
Just go and look at some present day countries that never went through the industrial revolution. Do you really want to live in Chad, or the USA? Yeah, I thought so.
Re:Hmm - comparison (Score:3, Informative)
Its easy to think that from here, but I believe that's a bit of 'grass is greener' thinking. We've never experienced true rural lifestyles. Especially not pre-industrial rural lifestyles. Life in feudal England was best described as nasty, brutish, and short. The same may reasonably said of 1850s London, but that really cannot be said about the majority of Londoners today, even in the worst neighborhoods.
It took a while to figure out how to make that work, but in the end I do think it works better. We can toy with going back to the land, and build little communes, and admire the Ahmish and Mennonites in their horse-drawn carriages. But there are trade-offs to living off the land that we should recognize before throwing it all away to go back to the trees.
And actually, that was the Bay Area. I bet there were some folks that went from living on the street to
Re:Hmm - comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
>If anything, the Industrial revolution made
>people poorer. A few people got really rich,
>but the shift to a urban v. Rural lifestyle
>ruined the lives of generationsof people.
Clearly you have had your history fed to you by spoon, or else by a Marxist. In actual fact the shift to the urban lifestyle broke the back of old aristocracy by giving people a freedom of choice they didn't have before. No longer must there choices consist of working a farm owned by a landlord or starve...
Read some books about the lifestyle of the average person in the middle ages and then compare that to the wage slaves of the Industrial Revoloution. Were they better off? You bet. Were they still exploited, treated like cattle and forced into lives of desperation. Damn right.
The point is that there was an incremental *increase* in the quality of living for the new urban working class. And the ensuing increase in literacy and the narrowing of class boundaries led to the reforms that truly made the working(man)'s life better and gave hope and upward mobility to (his) children.
The industrial revoloution was a *good thing* (tm). Don't let anyone tell you different. The fact that it also came with its own set of *bad things* (tm) is just the way things work. The pendulumn swings and over time things balance out.
Please don't post regurtitated historical pablum in the future. Do some reading and think for yourself!
Jack
Industrial revolution hurt a lot of poor people (Score:3, Interesting)
>by spoon, or else by a Marxist.
Perhaps being a Marxist is a bit like reading history with a spoon, I really don't know, but I have read some books about the lifestyle of people in the medieval and industrial capitalist England, and I got the distinct impression that the industrial revolution actually made a lot of the poorest people even poorer.
Sure, a century or 2 later things are a bit different, but at the time, thousands of poor peasants were displaced and forced into the cities to work in appalling conditions for virtually nothing. As agricultural workers they were made redundant by new agri-technologies. Many of these early industrial workers (including young children) were worked literally to death in a few years. There was wide-spread starvation. In short, their quality of life (never that high) turned to shit. At least as serfs they were sufficiently valuable to their masters to be kept alive, but as cheap industrial labour to the industrialists they were expendable.
Maybe the industrial revolution was a "good thing" but that doesn't mean it was all sweetness and light at the time. On the contrary it was accompanied by unprecedented exploitation, widespread civil unrest, and police repression. Don't be surprised when these same things happen today as a result of the "IT revolution". What the poor and working people of the world need is a political revolution so as to turn the new technologies to the benefit of the majority, rather than a few rich Yanks (present company excluded of course
Re:Industrial revolution hurt a lot of poor people (Score:1)
Why excuse the most hypocritical materialistic Yanks of their views? More than a few people need to be reminded that their prowess/money doesn't give them license to make the world the way they want it.
Right... look at China (Score:2)
As computing and the Internet begins to show it's real effects, doubtless there will be many who lose their jobs (aside from boom/bust effects). Eventually, most of them will get better, less grueling jobs - or do you really wish you were an 18th century weaver?
Re:Hmm - comparison (Score:3, Informative)
Read some books about the lifestyle of the average person in the middle ages and then compare that to the wage slaves of the Industrial Revoloution. Were they better off? You bet.
Nothing so clearly contradicts your statement than the condition of child labour [brown.edu] in 19th century England, which was at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution. It was only after the recommendation of a Royal Commission in 1833 that children age 9 to 11 were limited to working a mere 8 hours a day in the textile industry. In mining, where there was no regulation, children began work at five years old and were typically dead by 25.
The purpose of this example is to show that the improvement in the lives of ordinary people did not come about as a result of the Industrial Revolution, but from legislation and trade unions that mitigated the depredations [m-w.com] of industrialization.
It is also important to remember that at the same time as the Industrial Revolution another tremendous accumulation of wealth was going on that involved simply conquering weaker countries, dispossesing the natives and keeping their land and resources. A large part of the wealth from the Industrial Revolution didn't come from the factories, it was stolen from abroad with as much brutality as necessary.
The pendulumn swings and over time things balance out.
Is this pronouncement your alternative to "regurgitated historical pablum"?
China and the real revolution (Score:2)
So, ironically, even in one of the last Communist holdouts, the real laws of economics hold true; progress may not be easy or clean, but it's better than stagnation.
Re:Hmm - comparison (Score:1)
Re:Hmm - comparison (Score:1)
Now, the net. So far, we just had some people get really loaded from overpriced IPOs.
The analogy to the steel plants and railroads of the industrial revolution are the web servers and fiber optic lines of the internet revolution. I'm sure you could find many more examples if you looked.
Too bad, to have a revolution now... (Score:1)
Patents (Score:1)
Yet what do we actually have? A system of tyrany, where the courts bow to the wiliest lawyer as to what is or is not patentable, enforcable, or "right". Someone recently patented the wheel!
The DMCA makes use of material illegal, not just making a profit off of other peoples work.
Do Freedom. Use ideas, and give credit where credit is due.
Bob-
Re:Too bad, to have a revolution now... (Score:2)
Well then just make it a pedestrian bridge. Only the hardiest of immigrants will make it to the other side and the rest can be used to lure sharks away from our shores.
Or, if you have to make it a car and truck bridge, build an inclined ramp that starts at its highest point on the west coast or in the Rockies and goes all the way to the east coast and the beginning of the bridge, so that you can coast all the way. :-)
What, that's not practical and a bridge across the Atlantic is?
Free Registration Required To Read The Following: (Score:1)
They won't care (Score:1)
It's the cookies. Any genuine name/email address info they get is just a bonus
Why should they be bothered that a small percentage of surfers circumvent their [lame] access requirements? As long as the bulk of visitors are signing in and accepting cookies (NYT's own and 3rd parties') then they'll be quite happy. After all, as even /. claims [slashdot.org], cookies are not voodoo or mind control. Riiiight. Can someone justify this latter statement or NYT's policy, with special reference to the difference between permanent and session cookies? Thankfully, Junkbuster is your friend and can be configured to send a cookie to a specific site without accepting one in return. My /. cookie must be getting a bit mouldy by now...
Obvious... (Score:1)
No shit Sherlock.
I tend to agree with the idea of a revolution (Score:1)
After playing Wolf3d in high school, I found something that facinated me to the point of BBSing and being the first in my area on the Net. The net itself has taught me a whole new value system. I have picked up books to teach myself languages... soemthing they could not beat me into in High School. Although my job is still a vehicle for funding my vices.. but my vices are more healthy for me. 8)
hippopotamus (Score:1)
A. Antitrust enforcement is a hippopotamus. It lumbers in after the game is over."
Aint that true...
Monopolies self destruct? (Score:2)
That's why he can't site a single example to make his case. Monopolies ran forever, hence the anti-trust laws were required to ensure a vibrant economy.
History says otherwise. (Score:5, Interesting)
No, they all end, because acquiring a monopoly in a market is a sign of market commoditization. In other words, monopoly power is doomed to fail because their monopolies become irrelevant. The marketplace is always changing, and if you stop chasing the moving target, it doesn't matter if you're the master of your domain -- you'll be left behind.
The only monopolies that last are those that are enforced as monopolies, such as the power company.
I've been looking more closely at Microsoft as a business lately. They are in big trouble. Every major source of income they have has become commoditized -- there are several free alternatives to their OS and "Office" software packages. What's more, this software is as good, if not better, than anything Microsoft makes. Lastly, interoperable standards -- such as HTML, XML, Java, and TCP/IP -- have made what OS you use largely irrelevant for the most popular computing tasks. (And before you quote some random special-purpose app that doesn't work on BeOS or something, re-read that sentence, especially the word "popular.")
What's more, the steps they've recently taken to defend that monopoly either alienate consumers (restrictive licensing) or haven't a prayer of becoming profitable (X-box). Losing market share + lack of profitability = bad news. The whole goal of the X-box is to sell the product at a loss to get it in people's homes, and then use it as a source of other income. Good idea, except that (a) gamers are fickle, and are always looking to the new best thing, and (b) game consoles are used for games. PC's and Macs are used for surfing.
No, he's RIGHT. The antitrust case should continue, but Microsoft is in real trouble right now, and their current moves are only making things look worse.
The internet has made the OS you use irrelevant. Microsoft is pulling out all of the stops to keep this from happening. What they SHOULD be doing is pulling out the stops to find new relevance.
Re:History says otherwise. (Score:2)
What's more, the steps they've recently taken to defend that monopoly either alienate consumers (restrictive licensing) or haven't a prayer of becoming profitable (X-box).
What about .NET? A Microsoft tax on all online transactions seems like it could be very profitable and I'm not sure how it would alienate users since the tax will just be built into the price that users see initially and they probably won't realize that Microsoft is involved at all. .NET seems like a reaction to the unavoidable obsolescence that you are talking about.
Whether or not .NET will be the silver bullet that Microsoft is relying on is unknown right now, but it definitely sounds like the backup strategy which you say they need. I'm certainly willing to go to great lengths to avoid using .NET myself (no way do I want to give Microsoft access to my financial data with their past history of insecurity), but they have made a good business of getting people to pay for their shoddy stuff so far, so why can't they do it again?
Don't forget, they have a war chest so massive that they can afford to do really stupid things for awhile, just so long as they stumble onto a good solution eventually. I remember when IE3 came out and Microsoft started their enormous push to kill Netscape. I installed IE3 and after using it for a few minutes I thought that there was no way they could overtake Netscape because IE3 was such a hideous, buggy monstrosity. Now look where we are half a decade later. Microsoft uses time to its advantage extremely well.
Re:History says otherwise. (Score:2)
You answered your own question: "No way do I want to give MS access to my financial data!" There's a lot of mistrust of Microsoft in the world, even from the people who are wiling to use Microsoft's products.
This isn't a case where they've hit the killer OEM deal that has them set for the next decade, like DOS. Microsoft, with that no exceptions, doesn't get things right on the first try in the few cases when they try to do something themselves (as opposed to buying someone else's idea). And, it's rare for lightning to strike twice in the same spot.
It's an attempt, and it might generate revenue. But even the most slobberingly optimistic forecasts about
An even simpler question that few have asked is: Why? Why do I want to use
And that's the same problem they have with Windows.
Re:History says otherwise. (Score:2)
Sure there is a lot of mistrust of Microsoft, but that comes mostly from those that take an interest in computers (i.e., not most people). I don't think that most people distrust Microsoft enough to question the ramifications of what their software does. Five years down the line when people turn on their computer to go pay their bills, they will happily go along with Clippy when he tells them that the way to pay their phone bill is to just click on "OK". They won't question where the information is coming from which is used for the transaction because 1) they will assume this must be the right way to do it because that's the only option the program gave and 2) they wouldn't know how to find an alternative means of payment even if they were uneasy about the magic being performed.
I don't think that distrust of Microsoft will be the downfall of .NET. It may mean that no nerds will use .NET, but Microsoft will be perfectly happy collecting money from everybody but the nerds. If I had to guess what will make .NET an underwhelming success (or abysmal failure), my few guesses would be:
Actually, those are my best guesses for now, and unfortunately it's not a very long list. I do hope that you're right and I'm wrong and users will just not use .NET as that's probably the best way to kill it before it spreads too far.
An even simpler question that few have asked is: Why? Why do I want to use .NET when I get the same functionality doing things the way I do them now? This is a real problem; in order to sell something, you have to have something to sell that people can't get better and for free elsewhere.
Your data is centralized and redundancy is eliminated. The direct benefits to you are that it takes less time to do things online (you no longer have to fill out a whole slew of information when you want to sign up somewhere) and errors are reduced (from typos). It's a nice idea and something that I would like, but Microsoft is one of the last places on Earth I would want to be in control of this.
.NET incentives (Score:2)
The adoption of
Then there's added attractions to content providers in that Linux will likely never offer the complete chain of security that MS can offer. Want to watch Titanic IV? You'll need Windows08 and a valid passport account.
Titanic IV will be far more important to the web surfers of tommorrow than chosing their OS (which is a commodity anyway) or the prospect of some spook reading their credit card bills.
Xix.
Re:History says otherwise. (Score:1)
Next, I called a few of those Linux folks. Red Hat said sure, it'll run fine. Of course, they can't guarantee that all my games and other applications will run OK. But, they can point me in the direction of some application providers that may be able to help. I'll pass on that one too.
Maybe the OS isn't a commodity after all.
And about X-box. They're losing money on each X-box they sell, but the game people send Microsoft money every time they sell a game. The gross margin in licensing is about as close to 100% as you can get. I hear that Sony is making out pretty will with theirs.
Re:History says otherwise. (Score:2)
Margins don't mean diddly-squat if you can't cover your operating expenses and investment. If they sell ninety million games and get $20 a pop, but spend 2 billion on marketing and developing the machine, guess what? They lose money. To the tune of $200M. Now I'm just dragging these numbers out of my ass, but MSFT officials have stated publicly that they're not in the game industry because they think "Wow, this is a great new market for us to tackle!" No.
Sony mentioned something about using the PS2 to get into every home, to be a platform for all people to use. When Sony made that announcement, Microsoft went into full-on defense mode. In MS' eyes, Sony was invading their territory.
The whole plan behind the X-box is: Defend our turf. Defend the monopoly. Keep everyone else out. And it's worthwhile to them to lose money if they can steal mindshare away from Sony.
But they can't steal mindshare. Sony looks only as good as the PS2 does; nobody looks at the GameCube and thinks, "Gee, the N64 wasn't that great, I don't think this one will be as good, either." And people's hesitations about buying the X-box ("Let's see if there are any better games...") are no different from their hesitations about the Cube or any other new console.
I used to believe that the X-box was Microsoft's way of getting into a new market, but then someone slapped me upside the head with the facts, and quotes from Microsoft officials. They're not in the game industry to make money. And you know what? They won't. But the effect will be more far-reaching than the realize, because they won't really be getting anything for that cost.
MS in trouble for other reasons (Score:1)
Now remember when I mean good, I mean for Joe Sixpack who only cares that pressing the "power" button turns on his computer and opening Word lets him write up a letter to print out. This is the majority of computer users. Let's keep the whole "switch to Linux" argument out of here for now to simplify matters.
The problem MS is facing is that Win9x/2000 and Office 97/2000 are *too* good. There's little incentive to upgrade. They've painted themselves into a corner. What reason do I have to upgrade from Win98 to WinXP? Fancy new graphics? Extra stability? (Not really that big of a selling point to the masses.) Product Activation?
Actually, PA is where MS is probably hoping to save themselves. While you can use Win98 on your PC until the CD turns to dust, WinXP could be remotely "discontinued."
Think of this scenario: It's 2008 and you decided to format your partition and reinstall from your WinXP CD. Nothing's changed on your system, you just decided to start from scratch. So you format, install and attempt activation. Oops! MS's servers are reporting that WinXP isn't being supported anymore. You are instructed to buy a copy of Win08 (or whatever the naming scheme is then). Same for that copy of Office XP. Bingo! What could have been a no-$$$ proposition for MS has just made them some more dough.
Of course, take PA away (either by being forced to or by it being hacked) and MS's revenue stream will slowly dry up. Not that they'll disappear overnight, but they'll probably become like IBM -- powerful, but not quite as powerful as they used to be.
MS choose the ground: authentication (Score:2)
Xix.
Re:History says otherwise. (Score:2)
MS Office cost: $400 or so
If you look at how many features you get per dollar spent, you'll see that StarOffice is infinitely better.
Re:History says otherwise. (Score:1)
If you buy software for which there is a manual included, better support, you're used to working with prior versions, it works on top of a GUI that you're familiar with, in other words: productivity is there, then the alternative MAY be free (beer), but that doesn't mean you'll save more money.
It's the same with any Alternative OS. You have to look further than the cost of licenses.
Dave
Re:History says otherwise. (Score:2)
That's because it's not a replacement for Office. But StarOffice is.
Re:History says otherwise. (Score:2)
Re:Monopolies self destruct? (Score:1)
Left wing hogwash (Score:3)
If you read the article you'll see that Holstein is never asked to provide an example, so claiming that he can't cite one is quite dishonest. That rw2 doesn't provide one example of these monopolies that "run forever" himself is also telling.
Re:Left wing hogwash (Score:1)
The best example of this is driving on the right/left side of the road. Which side your community chooses might start out being arbitrary,
but pretty soon the 'users' are locked into whatever the choice was. Luckily noone has yet had
the wit to patent sided driving. Note that Sweden was able to undo its monopoly of left-handed driving, in order to interoperate more effectively with the rest of Europe, but the difficulty they had still reinforces the point.
Another good example is the querty keyboard, which was adopted precisely because it was inferior, (forcing slower typing precluded key jams), but made an empire for its inventor because the first secretaries learned it and everyone else had to follow.
This type of effect can be understood by recourse to mathematics (try game theory) or history, which
may be Left-Wing Hogwash, but believe me, hogwash might just be refreshing and even educational after a steady diet of whatever you have been imbibing.
Re:Left wing hogwash (Score:1)
Sorry, that's been disproven:
http://www.independent.org/tii/news/liebowitz_eco
Re:Left wing hogwash (Score:1)
Which is all very interesting, but the point is this: if you have learned to type on a QWERTY keyboard, the cost of retraining for Dvorak (however modest) is not worth paying. This implies, in turn, that the QWERTY standard is efficient. There is no market failure.
The key words? "if you have learned to type on...". This is the exact phenomenon desribed by lock-in.
Now is the DVORAK keyboard better? Maybe. Maybe not. Is QWERTY the best keyboard out there? Doubtful. With what we know about ergonomics now, someone could very likely come up with a keyboard that minimizes the problems of QWERTY while maximizing it's efficiencies. Will anyone do this? Of course not. There's too much of an infrastructure built around the QWERTY style.
And THAT is a market failure due to a monopoly.
Kwil
Re:Left wing hogwash (Score:2)
Actually, being a right-winger myself, I can tell you that there is also plenty of right-wing 'hogwash' that that ought to argue for government intervention in breaking up monopolies. The free market assumes relatively easy entry and exit from the marketplace, which just isn't accurate in industries based upon infrastrucure (e.g., utilities, where it only makes sense to have one set of sewers running to each home) or infested with an over-powerful monopoly.
The latter case is most relevant with regards to the Internet; the costs of entering the marketplace, as a competitor to Microsoft's core market, viz. OS, are prohibitive. To use the steam enginge example, introducing a new OS would be like trying to introduce a new railway gauge: even if your gauge is superior (in terms of safety or turning speed), it will fail because the entire continent has already been laid using the other system; everyone's trains are made to run on that gauge. Of course, in the real world anyone could lay two steel railings the appropriate distance apart and manufacture a line on which everyone could travel; now, only the inventor of the gauge may lay that track, and as everyone's trains are made to run on Microsoft's track, only Microsoft can lay track. Thus, in order to compete with Microsoft, one would have to get large numbers to switch to a new gauge of railway; this would be prohibitively expensive, if not impossible.
That, as I said, was right-wing hogwash (remember that Teddy Roosevelt was a trust-buster). Left-wing hogwash would have things about "the circuitry of the Internet being cooled by the blood of the workers," as such.
Re:Monopolies self destruct? (Score:1)
Re:Monopolies self destruct? (Score:1)
That's why he can't site a single example to make his case. Monopolies ran forever, hence the anti-trust laws were required to ensure a vibrant economy.
And this is left-wing hogwash.
Henry Ford initially had massive market share, and decided to treat his customers arrogantly (his famous "you can have it in any color you want, as long as it's black" statement). Competitors sprang up to take advantage of this, not killing Ford Motors but pushing it back to being merely one of the "big three" auto companies, instead of undisputed top dog. When the eventually-complacent big three got hit with the gas crisis of the 70's, the Japanese automakers moved in, to the point where Chrysler had to go begging from the government.
Word Perfect used to rule the word processor market. Then they dug in their heels, trying to stay in DOS when the consumers wanted to move to Windows 3.1, and they got toppled.
Hayes once dominated modem sales. Do they even exist anymore?
Atari was the leader in video games, when the industry first started. Then for a while, Nintendo was pretty much the only system anyone wanted. Then, the Playstation came in and established itself on at least equal footing.
Re:Monopolies self destruct? (Score:1)
Massive market share does not equal monoploy.
Re:Monopolies self destruct? (Score:2)
Absolute monopolies are impossible without government intervention. For example, let's say you had the widget market sewn up, and decided to raise your prices. Now, one of two things will happen: either investors will realise that this is a high margin business and invest in (or start) companies that will compete, or the market will find an alternative, and buy that in preference to your widgets. In today's world, an alternative could be a very similar product imported from another market. Competing against an entrenched monopoly isn't difficult for a startup, because it is economical for them to tailor their products to a niche, something a huge producer often can't do. Once the startup starts to enjoy economy of scale, they can begin to compete with the entrenched company on price, too.
Of course, if your products are of high quality and good price, and you have a monopoly, then the market will not react against that - why should it? Monopolies aren't inherently bad, altho' in the short term, they can be abused.
The only way a monopoly can survive is if the government intervenes to prevent the market's natural response. And even that can't last, what good will a widget monopoly give you if the market decides what it really wants are gadgets?
The Free Market works. State intervention does not. Here endeth today's lesson.
Economic Impact - Historicaly Premature? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's the mode of the day for pundits to jump on the bandwagon and look at the economic impact of the net, but in terms of history, we're still looking at the birth of this industry. It's too early to truly gauge the real impact.
Despite the recent bubble burst, I think the golden days are still to come. Where we are now is at the dawn of a new age, akin to the very earliest decade of the Industrial Revolution. What happens next will change the world, beyond anything we could imagine.
Re:Economic Impact - Historicaly Premature? (Score:1)
I keep trying to draw a line between where we are now and where the Star Trek universe is in terms of a global(galactic?) economic utopian existence -- and I can't do it. Too much still has to happen.
Stupid economy, mature already! The Internet has certainly made me more impatient.
Re:Economic Impact - Historicaly Premature? (Score:1)
It'll take a lot of hard work to "weed out" the negative aspects of human nature [hedweb.com] that no longer serve our accelerating evolutionary progess.
Re:Economic Impact - Historicaly Premature? (Score:1)
Sure, but that's what makes this one's commentary MORE valid, not less: The fact is, some new world-changing technology arriving on the scene is not a new event, but rather a new instance of an event. And just like instances of classes, you can get an idea of the functionality of the class by looking at past instances.
Each new technological revolution follows certain themes, and analyzing them by looking at past revolutions is a sensible way to look at what's happening now.
In essence, he's saying what you just said -- that we'll have no clue what the impact is for a while. But moreover, he's contradicting the current belief that the internet boom was nothing more than a fad. Our lives, how we work and how we live, have forever been changed. The world just became a very different place; the difference between 2000 and 1990 is far greater than 1990 and 1980.
He's identified that this series of pundits all making predictions is just another part of what's occurred in past instances as well. He's not playing the role of pundit. He's playing the role of Historian.
Re:Economic Impact - Historicaly Premature? (Score:1)
I just wished to commend you on one of the most intellegent and insightful comments I have seen in quite a while.
FWIW, you have my congratulations.
Re:Economic Impact - Historicaly Premature? (Score:1)
It's worth a lot, to me. Thank you for the kind words.
Re:Economic Impact - Historicaly Premature? (Score:2)
Man, do you guys even read the articles anymore? If you did, you might notice the guy specifically says that we won't notice any significant impact for at least 100 years.
Re:Economic Impact - Historicaly Premature? (Score:2)
Is that 100 years in calander time, or internet time?
Re:Economic Impact - Historicaly Premature? (Score:1)
Re:Economic Impact - Historicaly Premature? (Score:2)
And I shall be the Charles Dickens of this new world, catalogueing the various indignities that the modem-equipped Internet user must face at the hands of a world run by broadbanders, even though I was only a modem-user for a relatively short time and have since switched to broadband.
"My father's domain name being PeerIP, and my username PurrUp6894, my infantile typing skills could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than PP. So I called myself PP, and came to be called PP."
Nothing new... (Score:1)
History repeats itself? (Score:1, Funny)
How many companies emulated this paradigm during the dot-com boom? I think we saw ".com" tacked onto the end of every company in existence in the space of 2 years. As I drive down the main drag in town, I see furniture stores with ".com" on their 20-foot-high-letter signs! They define themselves by their Internet presence...
As easy as it is now to sit back and make accurate historical analogies, I didn't see anyone doing it in 2000. All the same, he has a point.
Re:History repeats itself? (Score:2)
No-registration URL (Score:5, Informative)
Just change 'www.nytimes.com' to 'archive.nytimes.com' for any URL (I think).
So here, it's. html [nytimes.com]
S VAL.html [nytimes.com]
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/26/business/26SVAL
to
http://archive.nytimes.com/2001/08/26/business/26
Hey Slashdot Editors..stop your whining (Score:1)
Its their web site, it is up to them how they want to manage it.
If you dont like it STOP LINKING TO THEIR ARTICLES.
But since its seems the NYTimes is providing a great portion of your content, thats not very likely is it?
Re:Hey Slashdot Editors..stop your whining (Score:1)
If you don't like what happens at /. they why don't you stop coming here?
Complain anyway (Score:2)
On the other hand, if they get 100,000 complaint emails, they'll realize that they're losing traffic, and thus revenue, and discard their registration system.
Re:Complain anyway (Score:3, Insightful)
They're a private company, providing a service, and earning their keep through advertising, which benefits from registration and tracking.
If registration and tracking of users and what articles they read helps them a. target appropriate banner ads to browsers and/or b. publish more successful content, they're certainly not going to get rid of registration, no matter how much you complain.
(note: at the 2001 MIT Image and Meaning conference, I think the Times Science editor said they didn't select topics and articles based on readership statistics gathered from the web, but I highly doubt they're not influenced in some way by how successful certain topics are.)
Re:Complain anyway (Score:1)
So: I won't register every time I move around. Too bad for them; if they can't implement a quick and usable system for people who don't carry cookies in their pockets, they won't get any registration information from me.
Re:Complain anyway (Score:2)
Most news sites manage to track and audit their hits and clickthroughs without making people register. Most news sites manage to carry the inverted-pyramid model over to the web, instead of posting endless, useless headline lists. And most news sites manage to serve their content without having as much grief with outages, hack attacks, and simply making their scripts work.
I've been on a web team or two myself. Plus I spend hours on the web every day. (Even if I didn't enjoy it so much, my job requires a lot of odd research.) I'm convinced that the big problem with most bad web sites is a top-heavy, uncoordinated bureaucracy that can't figure out what it's doing wrong. Unnecessary form-filling is (one) symptom of that.
Wise up guy, your emperor forgot to put his pants on.
Re:Complain anyway (Score:1)
They are at http://www.economist.com
Book Recommendation (Score:1)
The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers [fatbrain.com]
Revolutions (Score:2)
Re:Revolutions (Score:1)
And if you don't believe that technology is accelerating, you might want to check out the number of patents issued in the past ten years versus the number of patents issued over say.. the 1960's. Even if you discount the fact that patents are arguably more often frivolous now, it still remains that invention is occuring on a much broader scale, at a faster rate.
A fundamental technology (like the electric motor, or the internet) provides a tremendous base for innovation. It seems to take a good number of years before the technology is sort of "taken for granted". There are many potential applications and adaptations of the Internet and its fundamental technologies that we haven't even begun to explore (and no, I don't know what possibilites are, else I would be on a path to big $$$).
Its also interesting to note, that the time for society to accept new technology on a widespread basis has also decreased. Example: Television took between 20 - 30 years before it could be considered a widespread technology. VCR's took 10 - 15 years. CD's 8 - 10. DVD's, while not quite widespread, are looking like they are going to be around 5 years or so (from the time that a large number of commericial players were offered to consumers, to their (relatively) widespread acceptance, and usage). It seems to me that it took people alot less time to get used to dvd's than cd's (I judge this from working at a library which didn't have cd's in its collection until the early 90's, but started offering dvd's in 1999).
So, change is not necessarily change, when you consider the fact that the amount of change taking place in a given period of time is increasing at a dramatic rate.
Lame pun of the day (Score:1)
economic effect of the Internet to various other technological revolutions, especially the introduction of steam power in the
early 19th century.
Yep. So this latest revolution must be the better revolution. Steamy pron, instead of just hot air.
-1 Not funny
-1 x-rated
-1 off-topic
-1 trying too hard
Stop complaining about their registration system.. (Score:1)
Unless you guys are payed per word that you add to the articles (in which case complaining about the registration system is a nice way to make some extra money) I wouldn't mind if you stopped complaining about it.
The NY Times has setup a website so you can with relative ease access their articles. All they ask is that you register. Enter a random name, a password you forget immediately, an email address which points to your yahoo.com address, set your country to Afghanistan (with their one IP address
If you don't like the way the NY Times handles its website (or the stupidity that you still can read the articles without being registered (hey, why don't you post these links then?)) you should stop posting articles from that site...
Edwin, tired of this constant complaining
Re:Stop complaining about their registration syste (Score:2)
Secondly, I think Slashdot not posting links to the unregistered content is a good thing if suddenly archive.nytimes.com was getting upwards of 25 hits per seconds, someone over there would notice and shut it down. Remember, before archive it was channel.nytimes.com, and thats gone now.
Important message to New York Times (Score:3, Funny)
Dear New York Times Reader Feedback:
It has come to my attention that you require reader registration to have access to your articles. Don't you realize that this costs you several opportunities to be Slashdotted every month? Other sites enjoy the pleasure of watching their service grind to a screeching halt whenever somebody on Slashdot finds an interesting article -- don't miss out on this wonderful opportunity!
Slashdot readers are generally upper-middle class with lots of disposable income, and would be a very valuable commodity to your advertisers, if it weren't for the fact that 80% of them use banner ad blockers to block out all your ads, and the other 20% just write Perl scripts to grab your content directly.
Anyway, I hope you take my words to heart and realize the sooner you make your content free and unrestricted, the sooner your site will end up on fuckedcompany and we can make fun of you for giving away all your content for free.
Sincerely,
A concerned reader
There. I think that oughta do it.
Re:Important message to New York Times (Score:1)
There is even a parallel to the MPAA/RIAA (Score:2)
The plantation masters. Yep - they were the economic future of America
Yep, they were entitled to slaves because they put money and effort into them
And without slavery, they had no *incentive* to grow cotton or tobacco
even better, if you freed a slave, you were stealing
and I pitty those poor fools who thought that the slave states could nicely get along with the free states.
to the plantation masters, technology ment using the cotton gyn and slaves to run bigger plantations than ever in history - yep thats what they thought the industrial revolution was about.
however, when it all hit the fan, nobody ever expected so much loss in life and property, the civil war was brutal
Re:There is even a parallel to the MPAA/RIAA (Score:1)
The industrial revolution also ended slavery. The growing industrialization of America mirrored in many ways the industrialization of Britian, in that sentiment towards slavery grew largely dissaproving amoung the industrialized. This mechanization suggested that it was no longer necessary to use slaves. Profit margins could now potentially be maintained without free labour.
Of course, the south would remain virtually the same even after the Civil War until industrialization became as widespread there as in the north.
As much as I dislike the MPAA / RIAA, I don't think we'll see a parallel between them and slavery. The RIAA essentially has been defeated by a technological revolution in which all copy-protection schemes can be defeated (All. I doubt there is, or will be any widespread protection scheme for software, audio, video, etc.. that can stand up over time). The RIAA are trying plug up the dike, but its already burst. They totally missed the mp3.
Re:There is even a parallel to the MPAA/RIAA (Score:1)
Very shallow observations (Score:1)
I don't think that Internet is as revolutionary as the steam engine. The steam engine provided a new source of power, which until then has been provided by animals, wind and water. This was a huge transformation.
The Internet is just an incremental improvement on the telegraph. It was the invention of telegraph (in lat 18th century) that revolutionized communications. Until then a message could travel as fast as a horseman.
The electric telegraph network of mid 19th century is the obvious precursor of today's Internet.
Electronic revolution (Score:1)
After all, we do not talk about "Spinning-Jenny type steam engine"-revolution and railroad-revolution. We only talk about industrial revolution.
Actually the similarities between the steam-revolution and our current era are quite striking.
First came the few isolated pioneers (Spinning-Jenny-type machines vs. first computers) and couple of decades later we have huge networks of the things connecting places that were before considered remote and far away (Railroads vs. Internet).
Industrial revolution led to urbanization and completely changed the role of workers. I can only wait and watch how the "information revolution" will effect us...
Steel and software (Score:2, Insightful)
Gordon says: Old Andrew Carnegie's formula still applies. Whether you're making steel or software, you invest to be the low-cost producer.
Could there be any two products more different than steel and software? Could the costs of production be calculated any more differently?
In software economics, there are no economies of scale. There's no concept of a vertical monopoly like Carnegie had. Assets for software companies are all labour, not capital equipment. Cost of manufacturing software is trivial while for steel, cost of manufacturing is the name of the game. In the steel industry you can invest to cut cost; in software you invest to improve quality.
Steel is capital intensive. Software companies have been started for pocket change.
Successful software companies can meet any competitive threat through upgrades and innovation. Steel companies are nearly powerless to deal with competitive threats from cheaper and stronger materials like new plastics and alloys.
Carnegie is, in fact, better remembered today for his idealistic theories of philanthropy [andrewcarnegie.org]. I suspect that the 19th century industrialists probably don't have much of value to tell the information economy beyond the homilies [usdreams.com] of thrift and hardwork. Even those don't apply so much.
The steam engine era (Score:3, Insightful)
It took about a century, from 1600 to about 1700, to develop the components needed for a steam engine. Steam powered water pumps (no piston, just valves) were developed, and were useful enough to get a very modest boiler industry going.
Newcomen, in 1705, had the first useful steam engine, although it wasn't very good. Newcomen had it backwards; he let the steam into the cylinder at maximum displacement, then injected water to condense the steam within the cylinder, allowing atmospheric pressure to move the piston in compression. It took until 1768 before Watt fixed this and got it right.
Suddenly things speeded up. By 1781, Watt had all the components of the modern steam engine - valve gear, governor, flywheel, indicating devices, and double-acting piston. 1782 brought the steam hammer, the first power tool. This was a major step - steam engines providing the power to make more steam engines. 1784 brought the first model locomotive, although it was 1804 before the first full-sized one, and 1825 until one that was commercially useful.
Then things really speeded up. 30 MPH in 1829. Railroads went everywhere in the next 30 years. So did industry. The rest, of course, is history.
Now that was a technological singularity. The Internet looks minor compared to steam.
Are we at the beginning of a Revolution ? (Score:1)
One of the obvious trends that information technology brings about is the shortening of the time between inception and acceptance. It steepens the s-curve. In short, predicting the future of the Internet from the time it took for the steam engine to change the world is a mug's game - the world of today isn't that world.
True, the human machine can only accept change at a certain rate. But even that rate is increasing. In prehistory the adoption of a new technology took hundreds of years. By the time of the railroad it was 50-100. Today we are closer to 5-10 years. We are conditioned to accept change at a faster rate, to latch on to the latest and newest every year, not every generation.
My guess is that we have basically passed the inflection point for adoption of the Internet/Web Mk1. Many people are out there trying to find its replacement, the Internet/Web Mk2. Maybe its wearable computers and wireless; maybe its the semantic web. While it will have its roots in the Internet of today, it will be different.
Yes, the Internet is a revolution, but its nearly over. Long live the next revolution.
Re:yo ST! don't buy an STP! (Score:1)
Re:yo ST! don't buy an STP! (Score:1)
Re:It's about time! (Score:1)
Disclaimer: Not an attempt at karma whoring.
Re:It's about time! (Score:2)
On the sign-in page, have you noticed the part towards the bottom where they let you opt in to receiving offers from their partners? Presumably, they make money when somebody decides to use this feature. And apparently they are making enough off of it that they feel that insisting on registration is warranted. This is why they require logging in.
Don't get me wrong here -- I am just as opposed to the idea of having to log in to read a freely available newspaper article as most everybody else is. I just see the reasoning behind why they are doing it this way.
Re:It's about time! (Score:1)
Yeah, I frequently have the "oh, just another NYTimes article, guess I'll skip it unless it seems really interesting" reaction (things like partners or cypherpunks/cypherpunks are easy enough but they do tend to change over time).
I don't really understand why the NYTimes has this system (when they started I assumed it was a prelude to charging $$$ for access, but now, are they trying to get demographic data for advertisers or something?). But I'm also curious about why slashdot goes ahead and links to the articles so often. The Washington Post and other good papers are online and can be linked freely, no logins involved.
So lie on the registration form (Score:1)
They may get the message... (Score:1)
...but I doubt they'll do anything about it. The main point of the reg system wrt the collection of personal info is not the name/email address. It's the cookies. You have to accept 3rd party permanent cookies for the login to work (cf /.)
Why would the NYT give a flying fart about a few thousand individuals of the type who frequent /.? Do you honestly think they're more important and have more clout than NYT's advertising partners? Me neither.
Re:They may get the message... (Score:1)
Re:It's about time! (Score:1, Interesting)
The NYT makes just enough money to stay afloat right now in this no-IPO climate. Their regi system gives them much, much higher ad rates than the competition(who are by and large _not_ making enough money to stay afloat.)
So if you want to continue to enjoy their news, use the regi system and realize that you are "paying" for the service with no money of your own -- you are simply costing advertisers more to market to you. It is really a premium level site that is free of charge, but not restriction.
BTW: if everyone foiled the regi system the site would most likely go away, so do your part.
Please don't think I'm some kind of corporate cheerleader -- you must see the reality of the market today and you hopefully also sense that there are 200 people that make that site so good.
PS: I am familiar with the internal workings of their regi system and I can tell you that they do not do _any_ individual by individual tracking. The answers to your ?s establish you as a member of a profile group and all tracking is done by group, not user. They have taken care to not violate your privacy this way, although I am wary of some of the java ads that they are carrying right now as it is vey easy to do tricky stuff w/ user cookies with one of those.
Re:yeah (Score:1)
Re:yeah (Score:2)
Gotta go now, I want to be sure not to miss the NYT Internet Police *not* showing up at my door again to arrest me for ignoring the 2 or 3 pieces of spam I've gotten from them over the past 2 years.
Re:lameness? (Score:1)