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Has The "Technology Bounceback" Begun?
jg21 writes "Has the 'return of technology' begun, asks this article in the wake of all the coverage of CES both here on Slashdot and elsewhere. But just as it's difficult to gauge how many swallows make a summer, how do you measure a technology bounceback? JDJ's suggestions include indicators from 2004 such as the doubling of Google's share price in just 6 months, the mega-sucess of the iPod, and the success of the Blackberry." Decent article that asks a good question; you'll have to wade through the ads to get to the real text.
Try http://www.sys-con.com/story/print.cfm?storyid=477 40 as it might be easier to read for that one article.
If there is such a bouncback where are the jobs.
.NET.
.NET hadn't even existed for 5 Years).
;)
People want to pay a graduate wage to get a person with a good amount of experiance.
Some jobs demand a MCSE for things that are not even related to the qualification.
Others are just plain absurd. eg about 1.5 years ago I saw an add asking for CCNA, MCSE and 5+ years commercial experiance with
(The salary was £17-22k per year and
If there is a revolution howabout some jobs.. go on please
The product buying is different now. Gen X is getting more into gadgets and Gen Y is finially starting to have their own money to buy. The end of Gen X and Gen Y have tech built into their everyday lives. They are more likely to buy things but things that look good and are useful in their everyday lives. Not so much on the novelty items.
Products that are functional in everyday life and that look good should do pretty well.
Evolution or ID?
The IT "bounceback" will be a real bounceback when hiring takes place in earnest...on our own shores.
And equating Google's share price with an IT "bounceback" leads me to believe that the bursting of the bubble taught some people nothing.
If people have money, they buy toys. Technology these days are mostly about toys. So, if the economy booms, people spend more, and companies sell more. What they sell goes in cycles. Currently, people have already bought a lot of computers, so this niche will rest for another year or two before there will be new, strong demand (caveat below). Cell phones are being switched more often, due to their lesser price and bundling with subscriptions, and also because there are more features coming out with new phones, 3G and camera phones being the latest. This is already a full-paced market.
Video cameras and digital cameras also enjoy a more constant demand, and the same goes for mp4 players. iPod will continue to sell well, and there are currently no competitors worth mentioning. As a side effect, there might be an increased demand for Apple branded computers, especially if they sell a basic cheapo-Mac with a small or no margin of profit. This _will_ cut into the Wintel monopoly, because of the iPod.
However, there are no other spin-offs due to the iPod. When the Web was unleashed, there was an ever increasing demand for content, and a whole array of side technologies arose. This market is now satisified, and can only grow at a moderate rate.
So, people will buy an iPod. They will love it. They will love the Mac with Mac OS X and the simplicity, usefulness and ease of use it has, saying bye-bye to Kansas (viruses, spy-ware, malfunction). They will discover iMovie and iPhoto, and they might consider buying digital cameras or video recorders. They will embrace the digital life-style offered by Apple, shunning the Microsoft version in progress. Vengeance is in progress.
This is bad news for Apple bashers, but good news for the rest of us.
Given that, I wonder where Europe is in all of this?
I know many individuals who have no intrest in buying new tech products. They are quite happy with the last generation and see no reason to upgrade yet.
While this is true for some sectors (look at the failure of 3G mobile phones as an example) there are definitely sectors that are experiencing, or on the verge of experiencing a boom.
They seem to be mostly multi-media related. E.g. iPod/iTunes and PVRs. The wider public is also (finally) realizing that the internet is about more than just sending emails to grandma and a bit of pr0n surfing every now and again.
I also think that the time is finally right for integrated entertainment/communication devices for the home market. PVR, VoIP, home theatre, video on demand from the net etc. all in one device, with content sharing to portable devices.
siener's youtube channel
50k USD = ~35k EUR Minus 42% income tax in a european country, leaves me with ~20k EUR net/year. That's about what rent costs for a 2 bedroom apartment in the city. Slave wages!
I said, "A water shed? Like an outhouse?"
He said, "No. A Watershed is a geographic term. It's a high point. Something which defines the terrain and the river systems. The flow of water."
Ah. . . The flow of life energy. Gotcha. Powerful term. Didn't say that, though. He continued. .
"The Steam Engine was a watershed mark. So was the Printing Press. Telephones. You understand? The world is waiting for the next big one, and nobody knows what it will be."
"Any ideas," I asked.
He shook his head. "I don't know. I think it might have something to do with digital switching." (My pop worked at Nortel) "We've made some spectacular advances in the last few years. It's possible to do things now with the switches we make that you simply couldn't have imagined only a few years ago. None of that potential has been tapped yet. But I don't know. Telephones are old news."
We had this conversation before there was an internet. --We had modems and BBS's, but the internet hadn't breached the shell of public awareness. GUI web browsers and email were the big steps I think. They were the watershed. There would have been no tech bubble without email and GUI web browsers. Netscape and Eudora and similar were the tips of the iceberg. Tips of the rising watershed.
The bubble itself was then all about hype and over-excitement. --Justifiable over-excitement, (if that makes any sense). After all, the web did change the world, and it did make some people very, very wealthy. Amazon.com is finally the giant everybody suspected it would become. It didn't happen over-night, and people were anxious and stupid about it, but it certainly happened.
Watersheds only come about once in a long while, and not often in the same medium. Star Wars introduced high-tech production values never before seen. It re-defined the way movies were made. Spielberg understood this and tried to push the same kind of hype around Jurasic Park, using extensive CG animation and touting that as the next big step. His so-so film just happened to ride the coat tails, and he knew it. --Annoyingly enough, his plan sort of worked. CG animation certainly wasn't his invention, but he did bring it to the spotlight.
But in computer IT? What's the next big thing? What's going to make everybody go hoola-hoop rubic's-cabbage-patch again?
Well, first you need unformed power, like the advanced digital switches my father worked on at Nortel, which have massive potential but no application. Then you need somebody to come along and define that power.
So what's out there in tech land? Heck if I know. I'm not a technologist. This wireless bullshit is interesting, (and rather threatening, I think), but just a small step. People already understand that technology. It's not new. It's not unimaginable, like the simple graphic web page would have been twenty years ago. We've had walkie-talkies for ages now.
So what will it be?
-FL
Didn't /. just post an article like a month ago about how the IT sector unemployment rate is actually higher than the national average? Aren't we in the middle of the biggest outsourcing orgy in history? Isn't there disaster brewing on both sides of the pond with the software patent quibbles?
Saying that Google's shareprice is the bellwether for the health of an entire economic sector is like a doctor saying you don't have cancer cuz your head's not warm.