DJ:" smart dust "
lessee now, long-term thinking and all that. I gotta pour a little of Madame's bubbly in this morning's OJ if'n I'm gonna start {grin}
...wireless via global satellite and local cellular network distribution looks realistic to me; that's tele-phone / tele-vision / tele-net. imho, fixed copper/cable/fibre fortifications will look as folly as the Maginot-Siegfried Line, in retrospect, in a mobile world. Oh, we'll always need "information" canals / railroad tracks / highways but, it's 2-D, "flatland" point-to-point thinking in a 3-D space, or 4-D mobile reality of individuals as nodes.
What's limiting wireless is the sorry state of (mathematics) data-compression. Christ, we're still bound by Lempel-Ziev-Huffman, hit the wall about 15 years ago. pkZIP is it? harrumph !
The interesting thing (to me) about all things wire-less is that - for us, it's evolution but, for the rest of the world, with little or no infra-structure (by comparison) to begin with - it's a great leap forward. I mean, 10 years ago, it was a running joke for Americans In Paris: "I can't get a telephone". Now, we simply get a handi ;-) Just imagine the implications for China, India, Africa and Latin America.
Which means, "pipes" are passe: "Wired" is tired, as the magazine itself is fond of saying about all things hot, and not.
When "the internet", whatever that means, became part of our consciousness, and "internet stocks" started to splash - around 1994 or so, some biz-types here in Houston asked me to try to explain WTH all this stuff comin' outta San Francisco was really about. "Picture" I said, "your (bigold mainframe) data-processing system. It's an accounting system - the software you're running, we call that the big five :
Payroll - always the first thing to be computer-ized
Accounts Receivable - get the $ in quicker
Accounts Payable - get the $ out on the last day
General Ledger - summa cum taxus
Inventory / order-entry <===
"so you guys have got this room somewhere, all these people in the "order entry" department, sitting in front of terminals, telephone headsets on - just like NASA showed us how to do in the sixties, right ?"
"OK, now take all these 'order-entry terminals' you got, and turn them around 180 degrees! Get rid of all these 'order/data-entry people' and - from now on - your customers are gonna operate your 'Inventory / order-entry' system themselves. That's what 'the internet' means to you."
For the most part, what we call "Mail Order" businesses have been at the bleeding edge - really, they are/were nothing more than "order entry systems" to begin with so, it makes sense: replace 50 data-entry clerks with 5 Web managers, and that's productivity. "Mail Order" is simply "Just In Time" inventory control ethics.
What's happening now - I mean, right now - is kinda interesting. Most businesses' customers are not people, rather - they're other businesses. What's happening now is that the order entry department of GE is turning its terminals around 180 degrees, and the order-entry department of BA is turning its terminals around 180 degrees, and they're talking to each other: "send me 16 engines for four 747 aircraft".
The biz-buzz is called " B2B " or, "Business-To-Business". The language itself is interesting. Like many other American expressions, it has its roots in urban (mostly black) street slang - they've been slipping in "2" for to or too, and "4" for for for about a decade or so. The expression, "Y2K" kinda got mainstream, sub-urban America used to numbers in words. But, I digress (^_^) having just drunk 2 Mimosas. See you in 2K1.
The point is, there was this whole sector of businesses that are/were called "Y2K companies". What's gonna happen next - is that there will be this whole new sector of "B2B companies".
The implication here, DJ - is that we're gonna tear down our entire, traditional distributor / wholesaler distribution system over here: go "B2B".
For us, this is an evolution. In Europe, it is a running joke for Americans In Paris, "There's never enough stuff in the stores... at the right place, at the right time. They don't have an efficient distribution system over here, like the Americans do."
I submit that (like phone lines to wire-less) that they won't need to evolve, either... "B2B" will sweep across the rest of the world, like the great leap of cellular telephones.
That's another small step for Kapitalism - a giant leap for Social Democracy (^_^)
-Steve |
