[IP] Lee Gomes: When Pundits Predict Tech's Future, It Is True They Can Draw a Crowd
Begin forwarded message:
From: "John F. McMullen" <observer@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: November 15, 2004 10:57:27 AM EST
To: johnmac's living room <johnmacsgroup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Dave Farber <farber@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Lee Gomes: When Pundits Predict Tech's Future, It Is True They
Can Draw a Crowd
From the Wall Street Journal --
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110047671839073708,00.html?
mod=technology_main_promo_left
Portals
When Pundits Predict Tech's Future, It Is True They Can Draw a Crowd
by Lee Gomes
A lot of people will tell you that whenever a Silicon Valley luminary
starts to describe a hot new technology trend, you should hide your
wallet, because what you are about to get is a sales pitch disguised as
prognostication.
Whoever those people might be, none of them were in attendance last
Tuesday night in a crowded San Jose, Calif., ballroom, when the
Churchill Club, a local group that sponsors talks on tech topics, held
a panel discussion about the top trends for the coming year.
It's a popular fall event: Four well-known Silicon Valley figures make
predictions and then proceed to agree or disagree with each other. They
conduct themselves as though appearing on a cable-TV sports talk show,
with lots of "regular guy" banter and barbs. It's amusing and harmless,
like the astrology column in the paper -- great fun if you don't take
it too seriously, and probably about as accurate.
Judging by the preponderance of coats and ties in the audience, most of
the people listening weren't actually entrepreneurs, but rather various
hangers-on from the service sector: marketers, consultants,
accountants, PR people and, worst of all, journalists. The sort of
people, in other words, who don't have the wherewithal to actually
invent the future themselves, but who will dutifully show up to get
their meal tickets punched when someone else does.
The first panelist up was John Doerr, a venture capitalist who is
perhaps most famous for saying at the height of the great Nasdaq stock
bubble that the Internet was "the largest legal creation of wealth" in
human history. Perhaps Mr. Doerr meant to add "for those of us lucky
enough to get out in time," but he never got around to actually saying
that, and as a result, made it into the Reckless Optimist's Hall of
Fame during his first year of eligibility.
Last week, Mr. Doerr disclosed that he is, once again, a Web bull. The
Internet, he said, may actually have been "underhyped." There is now
under way, he argued, "incredible innovation and systemic
rethinking/reinvention in important Web services."
Actually, the question of whether something has or has not lived up to
its potential is a favorite among the technical punditry, because no
matter which side you take, you can't lose. You simply emphasize
whichever part of the half-full, half-empty glass makes your point.
For example, there aren't many industries that have embraced the
Internet more enthusiastically than airlines. But there are few
industries in worse shape. Who does that vindicate: the tech
triumphalists, who say the Web will conquer everything, or the digital
skeptics, who say the Web's capacity for economic transformation has
been exaggerated? Flip a coin.
The trends cited by the next two panelists -- Roger McNamee and Esther
Dyson, both technology investors -- were somewhat at odds. Mr. McNamee
predicted that there won't be another big, late-'90s-style wave of tech
spending by businesses for at least five years. Ms. Dyson, though,
predicted a big new business in bringing technology to the health
industry, mostly for record keeping.
My money is on Mr. McNamee, and not merely because this newspaper had a
front-page article1 the very day of the panel arguing much the same
point.
One of the not-so-secret Dirty Little Secrets of the tech world is that
no one knows how to make this stuff work. When Hewlett-Packard, which
is in the business of telling other companies how to computerize their
operations, turned in a disappointing quarter in August, it placed much
of the blame on a badly flubbed in-house effort to computerize its own
operations. While I personally would have given Carly Fiorina style
points for audacious comic irony, Wall Street thought otherwise.
Because of episodes like that, most businesses have long since stopped
believing the tech world's promises of better living through data
processing. So why would the health sector act otherwise? And isn't the
never-ending stream of high technology dreamed up by medical
entrepreneurs one of the reasons the U.S. spends so much on health care
in the first place?
For his trend, Joe Schoendorf, another venture capitalist, did a riff
on the theme of "China: Threat or Menace?" Mr. Schoendorf said the odds
are good that the Next Big Thing, whatever it is, will come from China.
While that country is currently best known for its low-cost
manufacturing, Mr. Schoendorf said that any civilization that could
invent the compass, gunpowder and paper probably still has a few other
tricks up its sleeve. Especially since it now graduates more Ph.D.s
than the U.S. does.
While Mr. Schoendorf was talking, you could feel the energy go out of
the room. Who, after all, wants to be told they face a future of
usurpation and irrelevance? Not this crowd!
There were other trends that evening: blogs, stem cells, consumer
electronics and more. You can see the list yourself in the "Past
Events" section at churchillclub.org2.
And there's no reason you folks at home shouldn't come up with your own
trends. To paraphrase what Homer Simpson said about young people: "The
future belongs to Silicon Valley's leaders -- unless, of course, we
stop them first."
Send your comments to lee.gomes@xxxxxxx
Copyright 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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