Bruce Gingery's Critique
Actually, I hadn't seen the article before. It is well written, and
while I disagree strongly with some of his interpretations, I do see
much of the same picture he sees.
The "Digital Economy" is a reality, and it is as much revolutionary
as evolutionary. The underlying technology is evolutionary. We saw
it first in things like ATMs (Automatic Teller Machines).
It is driven by multinational economic interests - not "international"
but "multinational". And indeed:
-> Those who play by the new rules will prosper; those who ignore them
-> will not.
No, I do NOT agree with everything in the article. For example:
-> The grand irony of our times is that the era of computers is over. All
-> the major consequences of stand-alone computers have already taken place.
-> Computers have speeded up our lives a bit, and that's it.
This is only slightly true with a very narrowed view of what the term
"computers" means. We now have "computers" in cars (usually several),
in appliances, as the complete underpinning of the telecommunications
industry. Stores run on computers, and that's not going away. Stores
themselves are not going away either, but they will see ever stronger
competition from E-commerce. Those who don't attempt to become part
of it, even on a local basis, will likely end up loosing out.
Telecommunications is not only not going away, and is likely to have
an ever-more predominant place. Travel _will_ decrease as
telepresence becomes more of a reality. As such, there will be a
shift, just for the sake of economics, to things like virtual museums
and immersion environments. That's at least 10 years off, and there's
a pinch coming between now and then that will really drive it.
On his premise:
-> The glory of these connected crumbs is that they don't need to be
-> artificially intelligent. Instead, they work on the dumb power of
-> a few bits linked together. Dumb power is what you get when you
-> network dumb nodes into a smart web. It's what our brains do with
-> dumb neurons and what the Internet did with dumb personal computers.
-> A trillion dumb chips connected into a hive mind is the hardware.
No. This may be a cosmological difference from the author. I do NOT
believe that there is a level of complexity at which consciousness
automatically appears. That's what he seems to think.
Perhaps the most interesting thing in the article is the points the
author makes and then ignores. To support his idea of expanding
telecommunications, he points out the "information economy", then
he ignores human access to it by saying that the computer is leaving,
to be replaced with chips-in-everything.
Well, yes, there are some products that put a touch-screen laptop
type computer in the door of a refrigerator. To me, though, that's
a computer, with a different case. I don't see this as merely a
difference in semantics.
The idea of "exponential growth" presumes nothing on human nature.
Federal Express and Microsoft both boomed BECAUSE they met the
perceived needs of people, not merely because of their advertising
dollars spent. Microsoft is in tenuous circumstances DESPITE their
economic power because they STOPPED meeting those needs some time
ago, and haven't (as far as I can tell) made up the difference.
Commodore failed, not because they didn't have a superior product at
the time, but because they allowed the public perception of their
products to be trivialized. IBM nearly failed for two reasons:
- Middle management became such a weight that it nearly
drug the company "under". They could no longer be
responsive in the least. This is a "reverse economy
of scale", where growth COSTS more than it produces,
and this fights against the savings and leverage offered
by the normal economies of scale.
- They saw the PC as a "flash in the pan", disregarding
the desire for perceptions of control on the part of
people using computer equipment. The biggest social
resistance to their growth was that "loss of control"
people perceived. Microsoft and Apple met that need
(at least in perception) and boomed.
-> Biologists tell a parable of the lily leaf, which doubles in size
-> every day. The day before it completely covers the pond, the water
-> is only half covered, and the day before that, only a quarter covered,
-> and the day before that, only a measly eighth. So, while the lily
-> grows imperceptibly all summer long, only in the last week of the
-> cycle would most bystanders notice its "sudden" appearance. But by
-> then, it is far past the tipping point.
-> The Network Economy is a lily pond. The Web, as one example, is a
-> leaf doubling in size every six months. MUDs and MOOs, Teledesic
-> phones, wireless data ports, collaborative bots, and remote solid
-> state sensors are also leaves in the network lily pond.
And, just as in vitreo that leaf doubles forever until it covers the
world (theoretically), in vivo, it never even covers the entire
pond. The web is already suffering under a weight of massive
data that exceeds our capacity to organize, with just a couple
billion web pages. The MUDDs (he misspelled it) and MOOs are
picking up gaming technology from the "action games" and mutating
into full immersion, although far from there now. They will indeed
likely lead the demise of travel, unless disease factors push that
first (there are over 20 MILLION victims of AIDS in Africa, with
an enormous hotbed for mutation of the known virus strains - how
long will it be that there's no atmosperic vector for infection).
-> The prime law of networking is known as the law of increasing returns.
-> Value explodes with membership, and the value explosion sucks in more
-> members, compounding the result.
Again, this is "in vitreo". The internet has been very much a lab
experiment up until about 4 years ago when it had had a year of
"market test". Now, under real-life conditions, there is a law
of deminishing returns from "search engines" which is driving
the (temporary) successes of "portal sites". That boom isn't
over yet, but the non-poisoned search engines will win out.
In real life, people cannot take the "one page gives all" format
that is consistent with a "portal".
-> One can take this trend further. We are headed into an era when both
-> workers and consumers will feel more loyalty to a network than to any
-> ordinary firm.
OR COUNTRY! This is established fact. But it's still a
people-to-people thing, not a "brand identification" thing.
This is the strong leading to world peace that the net is
engendering, and _may_ be the only thing that can prevent a
WW-III, complete with nuclear decimation of large parts of the
world. When interpersonal prejudices are disarmed because of
arms-length anonymity, people find out that that "weird stranger"
is really just "folks" - a person.
-> The Network Economy rewards schemes that allow decentralized creation
-> and punishes those that don't.
And management, although that's a slower move.
-> One curious aspect of the Network Economy would astound a citizen living
-> in 1897: The very best gets cheaper each year. This rule of thumb is so
-> ingrained ... In the Network Economy, you can count on the best getting
-> cheaper; as it does, it opens a space around it for something new that is
-> dear. Anticipate the cheap.
Which is one success factor of open-source freeware. Businesses like
RedHat are growing, DESPITE giving away their product. It's perverse
in traditional economics, but true. The bulk of the work at walnut
creek isn't the production of their for-sale product (CD-ROM's) ...
they even give away the CD ROM images. It's the production of
the freeware that's going onto those CDs.
See, what so many people miss is that generosity DOES return to
revisit the giver. That was an antithesis of the industrial age,
and now the economy is shifting - not because people's underlying
needs have changed, but because they haven't.
-> The distinguishing characteristic of networks is that they have no
-> clear center and no clear outer boundaries.
NO! This was an underlying DESIGN feature of the Internet (ArpaNet)
and it was a quite deliberate design feature. In nature, networks,
whether of plant roots, or neural pathways, or of circulation, are
ALL contained closed systems. The "LAN" is not going away - needs
forbid it.
But yes, decentralization CAN be hardier. The cockroach lives
several days after loosing its head, long enough for the female
to produce the next generation. Its activities are NOT centralized
in its "brain". The Internet is a telecommunications system, not
an information system. As such, it also must have dumb
decentralization to be hardy. It produces redundant routing BECAUSE
it is not designed for efficiency! And that redundant routing
produces the hardy communications needed for such an infrastructure.
This is another reason to disbelieve the assertions of a "hive mind"
that sweeps away the foci of usefulness that we now see in the
personal access points to data by people, currently incarnated in the
PC.
-> Competitors sprout beneath you and then gobble your spot up. One day
-> you are king of the mountain, and the next day there is no mountain
-> at all.
And that's what's happening to Microsoft. Similarly, UPS is
overtaking FedEx, It's realization of this trend that is
driving the "day trading" stock market. The pace of this
is increasing. There is a natural limit to it, however. Once
the speed exceeds that of human perception and considered decision,
automated cascades will be all the more enabled. Economists already
see this as the biggest danger in the current market.
-> The definition of lower adaptivity is that you are closer to extinction.
And this is what I was referring to WRT hanging onto traditions
that don't work. We've already seen that generosity comes back to
revisit the generous. Keeping people "subjugated" failed in the
former USSR, and the worst thing for the current communist regime
in China would be to also take in Taiwan, if they intend to continue
with their controlled-from-the-top society. It's the reason we have
no more strong monarchies. People "need" a leader when the
communications lacks make it impossible for them to gain a working
knowledge for independent decision and voluntary cooperation.
-> Therefore, there can be no expertise in innovation unless there is also
-> expertise in demolishing the ensconced.
But only when the esconced is NOT serving a vital need. Destruction
for the sake of destruction is not an answer that works. Dismantling
something that doesn't work allows repairs. Let's not mistake his
use of the word "demolishing".
-> In the Network Economy, the ability to relinquish a product or occupation
-> or industry at its peak will be priceless. Let go at the top.
Actually, BEFORE THE PEAK, is what's making millionaires. You cannot
forever build economies on the idea that "I'll keep it only while
it's growing". That doesn't work in agriculture, and it doesn't
work in economics.
-> Change, even in its toxic form, is rapid difference. Churn, on the
-> other hand, is more like the Hindu god Shiva, a creative force of
-> destruction and genesis. Churn topples the incumbent and creates a
-> platform ideal for more innovation and birth. It is "compounded
-> rebirth." And this genesis hovers on the edge of chaos.
Gee, Shiva doesn't work. Did (he) ever, except as a way to preserve
a status-quo as it carried across one destruction to the next,
because of the lack of mercy. Mercy is just one form of generosity.
-> Nonetheless, in the coming churn, the industrial age's titans will fall.
And there will be many pieces to pick up, for those willing to see
a new business model for filling the needs. These titans didn't grow
from JUST the will of the founders - they grew because they satisfied
some real needs of life - for housing - for gathering together - for
communications and transport.
-> Economists once thought that the coming age would bring supreme productivity.
-> But, in a paradox, increasing technology has not led to measurable
-> increases in productivity.
-> This is because productivity is exactly the wrong thing to care about. The
-> only ones who should worry about productivity are robots.
And people are not robots. That was the mistake there. The successes
in the Japanese economy has been because they were able to substitute
personal attention to personnel for general social benefits. Even
so, that model is failing, hence some of the recent unrest and
economic problems there. You can only substitute a personal tuppence
for a pound of benefit for so long -- it works for the person who's
just rising from the place of not having the tuppence, but it doesn't
work when (s)he sees the rest of the world with pounds in their
pockets and the freedoms that presents.
In a life-and-death struggle, people will ignore many freedoms, but
as was said early in the life of the US, "Those who would sacrifice
liberty for security will find neither". That's as true in the
"war of economics" as it is in police and military actions.
-> Wasting time and being inefficient are the way to discovery. The Web
-> is being run by 20-year-olds because they can afford to waste the 50
-> hours it takes to become proficient in exploring the Web. While 40-
-> year-old boomers can't take a vacation without thinking how they'll
-> justify the trip as being productive...
Well, as one of the 20-year-olds who happens to be a "boomer" in
years, I can't say that that's always been the truth.. but then I've
always been a bit ahead of my time.
On the other hand, other things demand my immediate attention, and I
can't comment deeper and to greater length than I have here, at the
moment. I think I've given you some points to think about.
Certainly Kevin Kelly is seeing parts of the same picture that I am
seeing, but perhaps we have differing views or differing
interpretations. I'm not surprised to see his k@well.com E-Mail
address.
Bruce Gingery
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