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All Aboard The Technological Revolution
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."
you come back at the point where you started.
Je t'aime Stéphanie
Frost.!!
http://archive.nytimes.com/2001/08/26/business/26S VAL.html
http://archive.nytimes.com/2001/08/26/business/26S VAL.html
Let's see. Industrial Revolution. .02
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
THis post is not a response to the referenced article. If that bothers you, I don't care.
/.'ers drop them a note, they'll get the message.
It's about time the Eds. started posting the Bitch link for NYT. in the NYT stories. They really don't understand how little their reg. system is helping them vs. hurting them. Even if only a fe K.
Let's just hope they do something about it. I'm getting sick of going the extra step to get to the articles.
- Dan I.
A worldwide network into which anyone can connect and be instantly connected to anyone else on the network is very revolutionary. The keyword is 'instantly'. Sure, we had mail and planes and ships and telephones before, but never did we have a way to work on the same problems simultaneously in real time as the Internet allows.
The WWWeb, OTOH, is still a vast wasteland of junk, pr0n, and stupid commercial webpages. God love it!
...the economic effect of pr0n, which we all well know is the driving force behind all technological revolutions.
spoken as a true ascii whore
No security through obscurity: my password is goatse. Stop me before I troll again.
Whats wrong the STP? I still ride hardtail but I am thinking seriously about getting a softie for my next bike.
Having to be a testicle, I am happily the testicle of a spork.
that inovation is hindered with every patent and progress is measured in green bucks. I want to see real progress! like a bridge across the atlantic or humans in Jupiter's moons, or maybe a search for intelligent life in Washington... And with the DMCA and stuff like that somebody probably is going to patent having ideas ( me, i'm planning on patenting sex! )
--Manuel
"I hate quotations, tell me what you think"
is nothing compared to the economic impact of goat sex
I emailed them, and proposed a no-reg-required subdomain, for high traffic websites such as slashdot. I bet they don't even read it, as i bet i wasnt the first one to email them, but what the hey...
http://www.linkdj.net/
Well duh, did this guy just learn about the internet or something? Sure ecommerce has sucked as of late, or so the stock market analysts keep telling us. It's mind boggling that they actually published that, I really can't think of anything to say...except...
No shit Sherlock.
Before I became involved with computers, I was a completely different person than I am now. I was more concerned with getting laid, drinking beer and poping any pills I could find. My job was a vehicle for funding my vices.
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)
Str8Dog
using System.Darkside; public
"Q. You don't seem to think governments can be effective in breaking a monopoly.
A. Antitrust enforcement is a hippopotamus. It lumbers in after the game is over."
Aint that true...
I sent Slashdot a story on Microsoft delaying the Xbox in Japan and Europe, but I guess it isn't news...
This is right wing hogwash. Monopolies run forever because they eliminate competition. If may get lazy, but that just makes them more likely to resort to illegal tactics, not more likely to go under despite massive market advantages.
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.
I would imagine that Mr. Steele's article might be a little premature in looking at the economic impact of the 'net. The Internet itself may have been around for a while, but the Web (which for all intents and purposes has been driving this economic 'boom') has only been around for slightly more than 10 years (slight being in the order of months).
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.
Beware the Whyte Wolf.
With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels...
Yup..different people saming the same thing time and time again. We know this is (or is not) a "new economy" .. There's enough references to the Industrial revolution and the railroad. This interview really said nothing new...
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
After Lindbergh flew to Paris in 1927, for example, there was a bubble in aviation stocks. People rushed in without even knowing what they were buying. It turned out that one, Seaboard Airlines, was a poetically named railroad. It wasn't an airline at all.
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.
Just change 'www.nytimes.com' to 'archive.nytimes.com' for any URL (I think).
So here, it's. html
S VAL.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/26/business/26SVAL
to
http://archive.nytimes.com/2001/08/26/business/26
i already answered that on giz. go read.
post #2223259
yeeeeehaaaaa!
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5UX0R3D!
No security through obscurity: my password is goatse. Stop me before I troll again.
It is part of the unwritten Catholic Church doctrine. Priests are allowed to "have" as many young boys as they can get away with as long as no one finds out. It is considered one of the "perqs" of the priesthood.
Speaking of how much traffic the registration costs them, why not create an account that has the login name slashdot and password slashdot, so that we can all use it?
It's so simple you don't realize you're giving away your freedoms.
Since last week's "upgrade" of Slashdot we have had endless problems, major downtime, crap flooding like I haven't seen in a long time and ASCII art out the wazzoo. Indeed, the very fact that failed efforts were made to block these posts has had the backlash effect of encouraging and increasing these extraneous posts several fold.
Yet, in spite of all this uproar the Slashdot crew remains silent on the matter. Countless posters attempt to discuss the matter and are immediately moderated into oblivion. In some cases posts mysteriously disappear. This is in stark contrast to Slashdot's policy of "openness" such as was demonstrated with the infamous router failure last month.
What's the deal????? What's the problem with starting a thread that adresses this topic??? Is Slashdot going to take Microsoft's aproach to handling the subject of technical glitches??
"Monopolies run forever because they eliminate competition."
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.
Worth reading:
The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers
Maybe you should go ask them about their registration site and how it's hosted. It seems blazing fast, even when you intentionally try to Slashdot it.
Here is a "must read" about the insidious secret license of Microsoft and the boot loader.
The story really is News for Nerds. Stuff that matters.
Thanks very much. I needed that.
Truthfully, I enjoy the penis bird. Although, I have seen some masterpieces that outshine it a little bit.
It's pretty well known that monopolies can only exist on a free market by producing excellent products at excellent prices. If you look closer at the nasty monopolies we all dislike, you'll normally find that they are not operating on a free market, but owe their position to government privilege. These days you buy that position using campaign contributions etc. The solution is to get the government out of that market, not to make it micro manage it further.
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.
Here's a clue...try filling it out with *fake* info. Not like they'll track you down or anything.
I rather doubt that a Brit from 1720 would have found the Britain of 1820 incomphrehensible just because it had railroads. A Brit from 1720 would have found most of today's world comprehensible, actually. Change is change, but let's not get carried away.
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
OK.. I hope last post didn't go through by mistake but we'll see
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.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
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, 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...
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
you evil beasty how dare you commit the sin of explaining how to circumvent this protection mechanism. The DMCA needs to be expanded to stop this type of evil.
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
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
Revolution, like the Earth revolves around the Sun? So that every year, you return to the same spot?
At least, I think that's what he/she meant.
Thinks it's cool and obtuse, but it's really just dumb.
(click here to tell them how much traffic their silly registration system costs them)
:-) and some more random information.
:-)
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
bash$
Because then they'd be in violation of the DMCA.
Seriously. Circumventing a protection device in order to get a copyrighted material.
Imagine that the NYT moves to some type of minimal pay scheme (.25 per month) for internet (ie: non-AOL browsers). That hole would be just as illegal to post, but lots of people would be circumventing it. And talking about it would probably be illegal too.
I can't wait for the DMCA to hang these bastards on their own petards, they're going to get shoddy work, and people with clues or curiosity are going to run rampant over their stupid 'security'.
Long Rotate the Evolution.
-- Ender, Duke_of_URL
...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.
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
...
One less spamming company in the world And it's gonna be fine. Out of all the addys in the world How the hell did they find mine? I pinged their host with a complaint, And it finally shut down their site. Now there's one less spamming company in the world tonight...
where?
Enough with your whining about the New York Times registration.
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?
That really was a lame article. I'm about to post something equally lame, but then again I'm not hawking a book. All this is because I have nothing better to do. Let me rebut/reply to the Q/As (I've cut out most of the As for space, so just read the article beside this comment):
:-) At least the author give an answer thats just as inane -- Did JoJo tell you that 100 years is the magic number? I sincerely hope that was a misquote of "...at _least_ 100 years..."
:-)
#1. Q: How does the Internet compare with earlier waves of technology? [A: steam engines, etc...]
R: There's only a few million better examples than that. Take printing presses, boats, and man-made lighting, for example. All these and much, much more had a larger effect on society than a steam engine (AFAIK).
#2. Q: Do you think that we understand the full dimensions of what the Internet will do to us?
R: Can you ask a more rhetorical question? (Yes, I already understand the irony involved in asking that -- and the answer will soon appear to be yes
#3. Q: Was the rush to invest in dot-coms typical of earlier investment manias?
R: Which bandwagon was the profiting one? I seemed to have missed it what with big names like eBay and Amazon.com laying people off and earning big FC points at the same time.
#4. Q: What are we learning from today's technology bust?
R: It was going okay until he menitoned Bill Gates. Uhhh, when did BG suddenly become a low cost producer? Has he hired a bunch of child labour from Eastern Elbonia to do his programming now? That and "sitting on billions of dollars" (his words, not mine) != investing money, unless you are in the business of ass padding.
#5. Q: You don't seem to think governments can be effective in breaking a monopoly.
R: Antirust legislation is like a can of peanuts. You never know if its going to be salty, plain, shelled, or honey-roasted until you look at the label.
#6. Q: So your view is that monopolies eventually self-destruct?
R: Bell took weeks to fix my phoneline. Monopoly + sloth-like speed = Long-Term disappointment.
#7. Q: Do you subscribe to the view that we have a "new economy" that behaves differently than it did a few years ago?
R: Awww, $20. I wanted a peanut. [Okay, this is filler because the book's author had a real answer].
#8. Q: Will economic momentum resume?
R: No. I think we are stuck in a quagmire of asinine questions from which we will never be removed unless TV and beer rot a few less reporter brain cells.
#9. Q: So are you optimistic?
R: Didn't you just ask that? I told you: Not as long as you expect sensible answers to your rhetorical questions!
That and I love the imagery of loading a bull into an airplane.
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.
"Do you expect me to talk?" "No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die!"
oh fine make me link to it.
I'm such a sucker.
Post Comment
Lameness filter encountered.
Your comment violated the postercomment compression filter. Comment aborted
Look at that they did post an article on it. And, it's on the front page no less. Now let's ee if I was right about the 500 comments.
Avast, ye MS bashers.
It looks to be running Netscape Enterpriise 4.0 on Solaris.
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.
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
We've found that without the gnu "steam engine", we would never be able to have so many web srvers/sites running. We're hiding out here, until we get around to GNUking these guise. Welcome to the brave GNU world of open/honest communications/commerce. not a felonious billyunheir in the bunch.
In submissions, text in italics is text written by the submitter, not a Slashdot editor. And I dont think fm6 gets paid anything to submit stories (do you?), be they two words or a novel.
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.
Liberty in your lifetime
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.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
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...
Karma: Good! Napster: Baad!
>Clearly you have had your history fed to you
;-)
>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
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?
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
at least I see a double meaning:
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.
>You may redistribute it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
It doesn't compile.
Grain can be shipped at ambient temperature. Cows were shipped alive and then converted into meat inside Chicago. You don't neeed refrigeration to ship food, as long as you don't butcher it before it gets to the city.
Actually, I think MS is in trouble for other reasons. Namely, because they were too successful. Anti-MS rhetoric aside, they actually made a really nice OS with Win95 (and later improved on it with Win98 and Win2000). They also have a pretty good Office suite available with Office 97/2000.
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.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
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.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
"Patents will be issued so that inventors have exclusive rights to their inventions for a limited time." -paraphrased
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-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
I really hate their stupid registration system, so I had a rant at them:
Your registration system is annoying. I would read articles linked in by other sources (and thereby increase your viewership) if it weren't for this silly system.
I personally find it disgusting that I would have to give up the privacy of anonymity to simply read the content of your site! It's not like I have to pay you when I sign up - I could give completely false information and make a fake account.
The things is that I'm not keen to circumvent your registration process by providing false information, because it seems more and more likely these days that exercising prudent anonymity (even spam protection, a false email address) may result in a prosecution for "Circumventing a copyright measure"...
In fact, some overzealous young legal mind is likely to pick up on this and say it's "Fraud" to provide your site false information too.
Where does it end? Please - bring down your site's towered walls... What possible advantage do you gain by collecting all this information? Is it moral to collect the information when the only useful purpose of it would be spam??
I know you may want demographics, user profiles, etc... But requiring the full identity of some casual browser is bound to turn him/her off your site.
HelpGeeks - don't bother visiting, it's not worth it! Really!
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. I suspect that the 19th century industrialists probably don't have much of value to tell the information economy beyond the homilies of thrift and hardwork. Even those don't apply so much.
login: password
password: password
problem solved!
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.
MS are not standing still either. With .NET and hailstorm, they want to control the transaction infrastructure (and exacting a toll from people using it). MS would be hoping that their current position will hold long enough for them to entrench .NET. Commodity components don't count for anything if someone else owns the keys.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
It really doesn't matter what the average user thinks, even if they are thinking about it (outside of this site, there is a huge number of people who would gladly give MS complete control over their computer so they needn't worry about it).
.NET and its add-ons will be driven by corporations and government as an easy means of authenticating transactions. My bank does online banking, and I cannot (will not) use it because it requires a Win32 app. As far as they are concerned, if Windows is OK for 95% of the population, why can't I use it?
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.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
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.
He makes a lot of great comparisons, but fails to follow them through with predictions on how they predict what lies in our near future.
So what happened to the airline stock boom? Or the early 19th century English economy? I don't want to have to actually REMEMBER these things! Isn't that what the internet is for?
Krispy Cream is people
Sure you still have to go through that extra step, but if everyone used the same id, then Clicknet or whoever can't really track you all that well.
These registration sites can, and do, allow for associating a name with click paths. Everyone already knows that the ad company's can track your progression as you surf. What they tend not to realize is that they can cross reference that path with any site that forces a registration, and serves cookies for the ad company.
And that is why I always post AC.
Refridgeration ver 1.0 [known as Ice] was used quite successfully for many years ... even in boxcars/trains.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
"Customer registration forms are the bane of attracting new customers. It's like posting an armed guard at the door to a department store and only letting people in the store after they show two forms of ID and suffer nosy questions about their family tree. Web users often turn away rather than having to register. Quite simply, it's not worth peoples' time to answer all your questions... users will resent being asked to register. Every click is a burden for busy Web users, but more important, users don't like parting with their personal data before they have developed a sense of trust in the site... Qualitative studies have long shown that customer registration hurts usability and makes users turn away... Marie Tahir from Intuit... Too-early customer registration requirement posed a major problem in the earlier version of the site. After this finding, the site was redesigned to allow users to enter valuable areas of the site without having to register. Registration was postponed to a later stage where it was truly necessary to know the user's personal data in order to provide a mortgage. As a result, usage doubled." - Jakob Nielsen
CowboyNeal for president!
"Hit any user to continue."
"The industrial revoloution was a *good thing* (tm). Don't let anyone tell you different"
Well, for one who is complaining about others not knowing their history it seems you have forgotten quite a bit yourself. Or else you are simply so focused on Europe that you forgot the there was an entire "rest of the world"
While Europe was hiding in the shadows of the middle ages people in the rest of the world were flurishing. These people had developed their own forms of society and governance not based on the feudal system. They were not slaves to aristocracy.
For the rest of the world I would say that the Industrial Revolution was not a good thing. The Industrial Revolution brought destruction, genocide, slavery and theft to name only a few evils.
Now dont get me wrong, I am not some "una-bomber" anti tech nut. But I personally would have rather of been born in to a culture that was not based on the notion of dominance of nature - and by extension dominance of others. I would have prefered to live in one of those more balanced societies that were around before the Industrial Revolution and the Europeans went around the world and extinguished them.
....