Andreas,
Arno Penzias seems to be voting for Compaq's distribution system.
"Ultimately, it's re-integration, getting it all to work
together for consumers -- it's a model of complexity and not
the simple solution that people seem to think right now," said
Penzias. "You need bricks and mortar, and you need the Web, and
you need it to be aimed at building a customer experience."
NetTrends: Web Makes Nobel Laureate 'Grouchy'
My Father use to tell me that "Numbers never lie, but liars always figure." He was an accountant.
NW
By Dick Satran
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Nobel laureate and former Bell
Laboratories chief Arno Penzias is the kind of scientist who
holds forth on the wonders of high technology -- even saying
once that the digital world "will help us to be nicer to each
other."
But these days, Penzias says, "I'm feeling grouchy."
The man who discovered background radiation left by the Big
Bang and won a Nobel Prize in physics in 1978 for his work is
now looking for new ideas as a San Francisco-based venture
capitalist. But what he's finding is a bit of aggravation.
"The Internet hasn't delivered upon its promise yet," said
Penzias. "Sorry to sound so grouchy, but I see the Internet as
being about empowerment of individuals -- and so far the people
in business have only given lip service to it."
Penzias is doing an interview via cell phone as he heads
down Route 101 through the middle of Silicon Valley, where he
now surveys the landscape looking for investment opportunities
as a partner at venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates.
But the man who was one of the pioneers of satellite
communications and reshaped Bell Labs from a home of basic
research into "strategic emerging technologies" hasn't suddenly
become a technophobe. He's still enamored of the possibilities
for people in the wired world, but he thinks technologists
haven't done nearly enough to innovate in a way that changes
peoples' lives.
Penzias is slated to be the keynote speaker at a major
high-tech conference next Monday with a warm-and-fuzzy-sounding
theme, "Harmony: Business, Technology & Life After Paperwork."
Technology has begun to boost the efficiency of the office
world, he says, and that's beginning to show up with
productivity gains in the economy.
"We are taking people from useless paper shuffling into
doing other, more productive work -- the power of this
infrastructure to create economic value is enormous," Penzias
said.
But he said the dramatic explosion of stock prices has
given a false indicator to the marketplace. The Big Bang in
Internet stock prices has left a glow around the industry and
that's giving a false reading on his spectrometer.
"It's degrading the ability of people to read the
marketplace," he said.
E-commerce players now are protecting their lofty stock
prices instead of trying to serve customers with human needs,
Penzias says. Companies that manage to gauge consumers' needs
will succeed in the long run -- but since the market is giving
the highest ratings to companies that are 100 percent
Web-based, it's pushing a model that doesn't always work well
in the real world, he argues.
"Ultimately, it's re-integration, getting it all to work
together for consumers -- it's a model of complexity and not
the simple solution that people seem to think right now," said
Penzias. "You need bricks and mortar, and you need the Web, and
you need it to be aimed at building a customer experience."
He cites a still-unnamed Bay area startup that is a
do-it-all delivery service to carry all of the online purchases
people make -- from groceries to refrigerators. EBay Inc.'s
acquisition of traditional auction house Butterfield &
Butterfield is another "re-integration" of technologies old and
new aimed at consumers' needs.
The Internet's "just one of the channels out there for
reaching consumers," said Penzias. "What you really want is the
best of multiple worlds, so you can allow business and the
markets to orchestrate the channels."
Indeed, the Internet isn't the best way to build a brand
and reach masses of consumers, he says. The biggest players on
the Web are also becoming the biggest advertisers on the "nets"
-- the television networks -- and Yahoo, Amazon.com and E-Trade
TV ads vie with tissue paper makers and fast-food restaurants
for consumers' attention.
"Think of the hundreds or thousands of celebrities you know
from sports or broadcast or movies," he said. "Almost nobody
comes from the Internet -- the only famous person on the
Internet is Pamela Anderson." Television star Anderson's
X-rated home movies landed on the Internet and created a
sensation.
But if the Internet is not the best way to bestow celebrity
status or to create brands, it does manage to make individuals
players in the media world. "Technology has taken the power
from the broadcasters and given individuals power they never
had," he said.
In part, it's because of the advances of the
telecommunications revolution over the past two decades --
which dramatically improved the ability of people to talk to
each other over clear telephone lines at vastly lower prices.
As chief scientist at AT&T's Bell Labs and, later, at its
successor Lucent, where he stayed until he retired, Penzias
said technology had a big impact on humanity in this realm.
"What defines us is our social relationships.
Telecommunications will allow us to maintain those
relationships," Penzias said at a recent conference. "If we are
sensitive and care about who we are working with, then
technology will help us. ... It will help us to be nicer to
each other and to have more fun."
So far, the Internet hasn't done that. But it promises to
have a broad impact if companies follow "lean and mean"
instincts and gauge consumer demand, instead of just watching
their stock prices.
The man whose tools discovered the secrets of the cosmos is
now looking for the next big wave of companies with
down-to-earth ways to improve peoples' lives. Maybe, he said,
they won't even be totally wired.
"From a technology point of view, we are at a very early
stage. There is a lot more that's going to happen on the
Internet," he said. "It's like a gravity that always pulls you
down toward the consumer. We really are going to change the
world, not just by making billionaires out of everybody with a
business plan but by doing great things for the economy and for
consumers."
(The NetTrends column moves weekly. If you have any
comments or questions, you can e-mail Dick Satran at
dick.satran(at)reuters.com)
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