>>I vaguely remember that I the past it took about 50 years from an > innovation to appear until it >>became mainstream.
> Huh? It took geosteering 3 years to drop the price of oil by a factor of 3. <snip> My rant about the "50 years" wasn't really meant seriously. Just the preparation to the conclusion at the end: > Or maybe it's just that someone figured out that it's easier to > develop sub-par products and sell them to people with below-average > intelligence than to develop something for an audience which knows > what it wants. > > Quite a bit different from the visions of many SciFi authors, which > envisioned that mankind would evolve towards higher intelligence. > Instead, we've an industry which makes being dumb more favourable..." Or, in other words, we don't have inspired leaders in the industry any more. A manager has to maximize profits, especially the profits which are measured in hard dollars. There are two ways to achieve this: (a) be innovative, open new markets, invent (b) cut costs Approach (a) is risky. It also requires a bit of brain. So everyone chooses the safe way, (b). This, of course, a tendency only. But it's sufficient and it surely kills innovation. I wonder how much further this tendency will go. - Klaus _______________________________________________ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
