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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Katherine Derbyshire who wrote (60828)	2/21/2002 3:34:18 PM
From: Cary Salsberg	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 70976

RE: "The underlying technology of the Internet itself will be forced to stabilize as the installed base grows." I am not sure what you mean by "stabilize." I would think that the Internet is primarily a "word" based system, now, and the world wants a real-time, full motion, audio/video based system. The Internet is primarily a wired access system, now, and the world wants a wireless access system.

To: Katherine Derbyshire who wrote (60828)	2/21/2002 7:31:36 PM
From: John Trader	Respond to of 70976

Katherine, You are right, there is a tendency for one to take for granted the technology that was created in an earlier era. Your point is well taken. And this would tend to make one feel that recent improvements in technology are more significant then they actually are. And, this applies to me as well. I think you have proved that it is very hard to be objective in evaluating the significance of a new technology, and that the bias will be towards too much enthusiasm. Add further to this effect for engineer types like myself. But there are some differences I think with this technology. Previously the microprocessor was used mostly for local activities, such as word processing, engineering tasks, accounting tasks, graphic design, and games. The internet capitalized on the existing infrastructure of PC's and related equipment and provided a networking application that was more useful and popular than anyone imagined. The uses for the internet are being driven by Moore's law and available bandwidth, and both chip speed and bandwidth are predicted to continue to increase at incredible rates. The degree of networking allowed by the internet is significant. Telephone allowed mostly conversations between just two people. Radio allows much more, but it is and was too complicated and expensive for the masses to be interested in adoption, and is voice only, which makes it less efficient for interacting. My point is that this invention is different in ways that appear to make it more significant. Metcalf's Law states that the value of a network is related to the number of users on the network. The networking potential here is quite impressive, but I will leave it for others to try to decide whether this plus the growth potential in chip speed and bandwidth make it different than previous inventions with respect to the characteristics of the boom/bust cycle. At some point I think there will be another "killer application" for the internet. As Gordon Moore stated once in an interview, it will probably surprise everyone when that happens, even the really smart folks. Between now and then, however, we may complete all of Jacob's 7 boom/bust stages. John

To: Katherine Derbyshire who wrote (60828)	2/22/2002 1:43:03 PM
From: mitch-c	Respond to of 70976

OT - Evolution of Communication Speed I actually wrote a grad-school paper (ca. 1994) on this subject, with an eye on business decisionmaking. In short, we've moved from an environment of fast messages with little content (heliograph, semaphore, etc) and slow messages with large content (couriers, sailing ships) to increasing both speed and payload. The theory of constraints says some limiting factor remains. Until fairly modern times, the limiting factor on "good" decisions was timely information. Therefore, organizations evolved to delegate decision power to the local (geographic) level - viceroys, governors, "factors," and such. Distributed, but uncoordinated. With the advent of mechanical and electronic communication, the speeds increased the geographic spans of decision power, and organizations responded by becoming more centralized - coordinated, but not distributed. For the first time, too much information became available, and it needed to be filtered - thus evolving the clerical functions of "middle management." Now, much of that filtering can be done electronically, but the challenge of managing data saturation is a concern for everyone in a company, not just senior executives. Many line-level employees have to apply the judgement skills (and take the risks) that were reserved to the (now shrinking) middle-management. Conversely, risk-averse managers have a greater temptation to succumb to the sin of micro-management while sacrificing effective people-management. My conclusion (at the time) was that organizations which emphasized trust and judgement at ALL levels were the ones that would succeed in an "information" economy. Coordination AND distribution were the keys to success. So, how is this AMAT related? Well, I wrote that paper the year I was working (as a contractor) at Applied's Austin facility, and I was fascinated by the culture. The company basically served as the template for my conclusion. I haven't had any reason to change my assessment of the culture since - although the company has endured some fairly traumatic business cycles. - Mitch