Re: Where to now?

>>I vaguely remember that I the past it took about 50 years from an
> innovation to appear until it 
>>became mainstream.

> Huh?  It took geosteering 3 years to drop the price of oil by a factor of 3.
<snip>

My rant about the "50 years" wasn't really meant seriously. Just the
preparation to the conclusion at the end:

> Or maybe it's just that someone figured out that it's easier to
> develop sub-par products and sell them to people with below-average
> intelligence than to develop something for an audience which knows
> what it wants.
>
> Quite a bit different from the visions of many SciFi authors, which
> envisioned that mankind would evolve towards higher intelligence.
> Instead, we've an industry which makes being dumb more favourable..."

Or, in other words, we don't have inspired leaders in the industry any
more. A manager has to maximize profits, especially the profits which
are measured in hard dollars. There are two ways to achieve this:

(a) be innovative, open new markets, invent
(b) cut costs

Approach (a) is risky. It also requires a bit of brain. So everyone
chooses the safe way, (b).

This, of course, a tendency only. But it's sufficient and it surely
kills innovation. I wonder how much further this tendency will go.

- Klaus