something more recent from PC Magazine...
August 27, 2002
The Economy: A No-Confidence Vote
pcmag.com
By John C. Dvorak
My friend Frank Catalano, writing in the Puget Sound Business Journal, tells a tale of a conventioneer who suggested there is no reason to wait for things to get back to normal, because we've switched to a "new normal." Although this idea intrigues me, I don't want to have anything to do with it, and neither should you. The new normal won't work, although it appears to be perpetrated by our government. Apparently, the powers that be don't understand simple psychology. Let me explain.
Nobody is buying. Justification for high-tech purchases is not something that has been sustained by a teenager-like desire to have something cool. It's based on cold, hard business decisions and cost-benefit analysis. Someone has to prove, for example, that Gigabit Ethernet will result in cost savings and efficiency improvement. And though we've seen a lot of dubious calculations over the years, for the most part, faster, higher-capacity systems make a company more competitive. Improvements in technology continue, and they force eventual upgrades. So what's changed that would make it so nobody buys anything?
The market hates uncertainty. What we've run into is something we've never seen before in the technology business: loss of confidence and something I call "the sociology of uncertainty." Since the desktop revolution began in 1975, the high-tech business has never seen a nation under siege. Although we have tried to minimize the physical damage caused by 9/11, the psychological damage has been tremendous and apparently ignored. This is exacerbated by the government and its constant reminders that we may be attacked again at any minute. I believe that we're better safe than sorry, too, but crying wolf is not helping anyone. Bush may tell us to spend and travel normally, but nobody will as long as the duck-and-cover message gets louder. After all, there is no reason to invest in anything if it's going to get blown up tomorrow!
Unsubtle message. The best indicator of this is the just-plain-idiotic airport screenings that do nothing more than remind each and every businessperson that things are not back to normal and that we are in a police state that isn't showing any common sense or brains. By this I'm referring to the so-called random searches that airline passengers are forced to endure. All these searches do is further demoralize travelers and show incompetence and desperation.
Case in point: I'm taking a short flight in a small prop job operated by Horizon Air from Seattle to Port Angeles, Washington, and the airline manages to pull aside five or six passengers for a frisk. Among this group were two retirees, a cheerleader, a middle-aged mom and—get this—a guy in a wheelchair who was about 90 years old. Airline security, of course, had to check and humiliate this old codger, and the flight was delayed. What was the point? If you've flown recently, you've also seen security checks of people who were obviously harmless.
Depressing thoughts. The search of passengers and their luggage on a short hopper filled with oldsters and kids from the area could frighten anyone into the following thought pattern: "My God, is this what they're doing to prevent another incident? This is foolish. This is doing no good. Something bad is going to happen!" This type of thinking permeates the business and investment communities. Nobody seeing this utter stupidity is going to invest another dime. And why would we?
What about people who have been a little freaked out by flying after 9/11? The sight of hordes of screeners with no common sense acting as though you are entering Russia during the Communist era is no way to get people back to the old normal. Folks, this is not better safe than sorry. This is stupid.
Real bombers lurk. President Bush, who is headed for a single-term presidency, is living in a dreamworld if he expects to get the economy back to normal with these mixed signals. I'd like to point out that while screeners were checking old ladies for bombs and knives, that sweaty freak with no baggage and a shoe bomb waltzed on-board a flight. The passengers clubbed him into submission. The net result of that exercise was that security now checks old ladies for shoe bombs. Inspires confidence, doesn't it?
Failing to understand the psychology of our national situation means that the economic recovery will never happen. And high-tech, in particular, will stay in the tank. |
