Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Eric L who wrote (51638)	6/8/2002 1:35:40 PM
From: Mike Buckley	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 54805

Eric, [Although Mike Buckley feels that wireless data is not yet in the chasm, I do - but thats another discussion]. Recent data is making me think that it is indeed in the chasm. My fear for investors is that they will mistake the rapid increase of adoption symptomatic of crossing the chasm with the rapid increase of a tornado. The first bowling pin was taken out some time ago - SMS messaging The important point of the bowling-pin analogy is that when one pin falls, it knocks down a couple of other pins. The reason I don't place a lot of emphasis on SMS as a bowling pin is because I'm not able to identify the adjacent bowling pins that are likely to be knocked down because of adoption of SMS. I'd love nothing more than for you or others to change my mind about that. Related to the ease of leveraging one bowling pin to knock down an adjacent pin, the best innovation for investors is when a highly discontinuous innovation for vendors is very continuous for the end user. Perhaps it's nothing more than my personal outlook regarding technology adoption :), but I see the use of data using a handheld device as being particularly discontinuous for the end users. We have to buy special hardware that is data-compatbile. We have to learn how to use the operating system. When we identify a particular application that we like, we might have to switch to a different carrier and that might also mean having to change our handheld hardware. And if we like two particular apps not offered by the same carrier, that means making a choice between the two instead of being able to use both of them. Worse yet, that might mean making yet another choice regarding the technology each carrier uses. I don't see those issues as particularly continuous for the end user. --Mike Buckley

To: Eric L who wrote (51638)	6/8/2002 4:06:44 PM
From: gdichaz	Respond to of 54805

Eric L: While your message is addressed to Paul, I offer my thanks. You have made the distinctions which, if I had the wit and research skills, I would have attempted to make. This discussion is extremely helpful to those such as myself who are here to learn. The data tornado is as Mike suggests, not yet IMO, but in Korea and Japan the winds are rising - but sadly the US is slow on the uptake (the weaknesses of dependency on infrastructure providers who may or may not have common interests with suppliers such as Qualcomm, and even savvy, as Paul suggests) and even more sadly Europe which is out of it completely for the next couple of years thanks to its own choices. One of the bits of experience I will share is that back in 1990 or thereabouts, I looked around and thought "distributed computing" was the wave of the future. I had invested in the mini's such as Digital and Data General, and decided that they were about to be overtaken by small but "distributed" computers, while IBM would keep its mainframe market. That was when I became interested in WAN and LAN, and therefore Cisco et al. But then in the middle 90's it seemed to me that there needed to be a broader distribution system beyond Lan and Wan, so I investigated "telecom". Along the way I found Qualcomm as what seemed to me to be a good bet as a way to the wireless internet/intranet nexus, and this was reinforced when Viterbi pointed out the advantages of handling data side by side with voice, using the infrastructure system put in place for voice, but with a separate "carrier" - that was HDR - now 1xEVDO. In those days it was assumed that a "wide band" required what that English wording seemed to suggest - a wider band. In the event, as they say, that has proven not to be so. We all learn as we go (though some of us start a bit behind). I hope to continue to. Thanks again. Best. Cha2

To: Eric L who wrote (51638)	6/8/2002 6:05:54 PM
From: Seeker of Truth	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

Eric, you speak of AI as a technology that never crossed the chasm. Indeed it never became an isolated single product with a practical monopoly but it certainly conquered everything in reality. Most big systems today try as much as possible to incorporate "smarts", i.e. the flexibility of human thinking as opposed to the earlier inflexibility of the machine. Every programmer studies AI in some CS course(s) and is influenced by it as well as by the general atmosphere that we have to get the systems to react like human beings might. There is an analogy with broad band, I think. Cable, DSL, 3G whatever, the triumphant idea is that we need broad band, though broad band itself isn't a single product. Evidently, many enormous innovations do not give rise to a single gorilla or in fact may not give rise to any gorillas.