Robert: > Who would have predicted in 1975 the current state of things? Many did exactly that. In particular, the reality of technology increasing the productivity of manufacturing such that labor-arbitrage would come to dominate global trade and that the "post-industrial" economies would not understand how to cope with these new circumstances, was widely appreciated. > IBM famously said that computers would never become popular > home appliances, to take a particularly egregious instance > of "case closed" being completely wrong.
Sorry, that is not what happened. In fact, right around 1975, a fellow at IBM named Gary Chen (who I knew well) predicted to IBM's senior management that there was a *very* large market opportunity at the $5K (and below) price-point (based on a Paretto curve of demand vs. price/performance), which began the effort that led to the IBM PC -- based on the "same" Microsoft and Intel technology that still dominates the 500M unit market for the PC today. The fact that so many people in the "hi-fi" industry have been wrong in their "predictions" doesn't mean that predictions can't be made -- just that they aren't very good at it. Obviously no one should take my own predictions with anything more than a LARGE grain-of-salt -- even if (or maybe because) I might be one of the few on this list who has made a 40-year career out of predicting these things -- however, I can only hope that I have at least stimulated some thinking and perhaps even a little entertainment! Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20120413/bde7375e/attachment.html> _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
