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."

Comments

No-registration URL

[ddstreet]

You can view the story without registering here.

Just change 'www.nytimes.com' to 'archive.nytimes.com' for any URL (I think).

So here, it's
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/26/business/26SVAL. html
to
http://archive.nytimes.com/2001/08/26/business/26S VAL.html

History says otherwise.

[Rimbo]

"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.

Re:Hmm - comparison

[Jack William Bell]

You Said:
>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