August 12, 2010
IT ISN'T ACTUALLY INFLATION...:
How The Cheap Revolution Confuses Policymakers (Rich Karlgaard, 08.12.10, Forbes)
The G-forces of change are scrambling the brains of those unfamiliar with Moore's Law and the Cheap Revolution. As one sad example, pundits and politicians argue whether inflation or deflation describes the current economic reality. It should be obvious that both are true! Any product or service shielded from Moore's Law is getting more expensive: education, heath care, minerals dug from the ground, regulated telecom. Any product or service built on Moore's Law is cheaper by the day. [...]Here are 10 Cheap Revolution rules that might guide us in picking winners and losers:
Consumers rule. Consumer technology is now ahead of most industrial technology, which forces businesses to change their operational practices.
Solid state rules. Hard disk drives will be used for long-term storage. Any information requiring quick access will be stored on silicon.
Interface rules. The friendliest interface will win. It's all moving in the direction of entertainment.
Transparency rules. All those 1990s predictions of middleman destruction turn out to be true. Poor bandwidth only temporarily delayed this inevitability.
Detail rules. Entertainment and sports with little appeal on tiny TVs blossom with large screens and HD. Think soccer and the Tour de France. Similarly, corporate executive dashboards aren't very useful if they only provide top-level information. Drill, baby, drill--down for deeper detail. That's what consumers and executives want.
Smart aggregation rules. Some forms of content will always need human curation.
Dumb aggregation rules. And some forms of content won't. Trick is to figure out where algorithms beat humans and vice versa.
Speed rules. "Newsweeklies" now sell for $1. Mind you, not the product, but the company.
Self-learning rules. We are at the beginning of the Death of Credentials. The ROI for 95% of college educations will be negative.
Self discipline rules. We are on our own. The most important software of all is our internal operating system.
...if the price can only be propped up by rigging the market.
