taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (06/28/86)
ashed into buying the turkeys. Balance your checkbook? Play videogames? Store your recipes? Give me a break -- I'm a computerphile and I use a calculator and pencil to balance my bills. Everyone is drooling at the thought of selling 100 million computers, but nobody has figured out how to do it. Education (and the guilt of not giving your kid the breaks to get ahead) is just the latest thrust, and only somewhat successful. It reminds me a lot of another industry I used to be involved in -- cable TV. They have this truly wonderful technology called Videotext (among other things) where you can call down screens of information and do two way transaction processing between your TV set and the Cable TV computer systems. For years people have been talking about this revolutionizing everything -- on-line shopping, banking, airline reservations, stock quotes, whatever -- all at the convenience of your fingertips on your TV. What is the result? Qube is shut down in Ohio, Times Mirror and other companies have sunk millions into building extensive systems of this stuff. The technology is there, and it works. Nobody will buy it, though. They did a six month study down in Florida where they GAVE the technology to people to test out. Something like 30% used it when it was free, and less than 15% were willing to pay $5.00 a month (breakeven was something like $30) to keep it when the test period was over. Revolutionize? A technology without a market is a useless technology, and companies have spent millions of dollars on this stuff only to find nobody wants it. Home computers are still the same way -- most people simply don't see a need. [Very true. The question is, are markets a reflection of the needs of the people or are the needs of the people a reflection of the market? (It obviously isn't 100% either way, but I wonder how many people would have bought computers in the first place if it weren't for the hype that surrounds/ed it... --Dave] ----- > Are we move towards a classed society: Those that have the > information and those that don't? We have always been (and always will be) a classed society. I think the classes are shifting, however. Prior to the industrial revolution the prime classes were rural/suburban. After that, the class structure shifted to management/labor (with the attendant rise of Unions). Now, the Information Age is shifting things towards a service economy (look at the impotence of unions and the change in work demographics) where the prime class distinction will be information/no_information. Some day everyone will have information (unless they choose not to) and something else will take its place. > A couple of years ago, I subscribed to both CompuServe and Dow Jones > News Service. For about a year I spent a fair amount of money "keeping > on top" of a variety of subjects. >Unused information is indistinguishable from useless information. Hear, hear! There is a strong distinction most people don't make. There is data, and there is information. Data is bits of stuff. Information is data intelligently used. I'm on Compuserve, and there is enough data up there that it could literally become an infinite time and money sink. The question becomes one of tracking down the data you need to get the information that is important to you. chuq
taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (07/01/86)
-------- This article is from hplabs!sun!plaid!chuq (Chuq Von Rospach) and was received on Thu Jun 19 23:39:49 1986 -------- [this is actually two messages concatenated. I trust Chuq won't mind...-Dave] > I've been wondering about the marketing techniques that some people in > the computing business (notably the personal/home/small business end of > the market) have been using. Part of the problem is that many of these companies (Commodore and the "You're kid is a worthless pile of <> without a C64" ads is a great example) got caught with their pants down when people suddenly stopped buying computers at home -- All the hobbyists had theirs and the video game market went away, leaving these people with 80% market share of a missing market. The thing is, there is an AMAZING market out there for computers if the companies could only figure out how to talk the Great Unwashed into buying the turkeys. Balance your checkbook? Play videogames? Store your recipes? Give me a break -- I'm a computerphile and I use a calculator and pencil to balance my bills. Everyone is drooling at the thought of selling 100 million computers, but nobody has figured out how to do it. Education (and the guilt of not giving your kid the breaks to get ahead) is just the latest thrust, and only somewhat successful. It reminds me a lot of another industry I used to be involved in -- cable TV. They have this truly wonderful technology called Videotext (among other things) where you can call down screens of information and do two way transaction processing between your TV set and the Cable TV computer systems. For years people have been talking about this revolutionizing everything -- on-line shopping, banking, airline reservations, stock quotes, whatever -- all at the convenience of your fingertips on your TV. What is the result? Qube is shut down in Ohio, Times Mirror and other companies have sunk millions into building extensive systems of this stuff. The technology is there, and it works. Nobody will buy it, though. They did a six month study down in Florida where they GAVE the technology to people to test out. Something like 30% used it when it was free, and less than 15% were willing to pay $5.00 a month (breakeven was something like $30) to keep it when the test period was over. Revolutionize? A technology without a market is a useless technology, and companies have spent millions of dollars on this stuff only to find nobody wants it. Home computers are still the same way -- most people simply don't see a need. [Very true. The question is, are markets a reflection of the needs of the people or are the needs of the people a reflection of the market? (It obviously isn't 100% either way, but I wonder how many people would have bought computers in the first place if it weren't for the hype that surrounds/ed it... --Dave] ----- > Are we move towards a classed society: Those that have the > information and those that don't? We have always been (and always will be) a classed society. I think the classes are shifting, however. Prior to the industrial revolution the prime classes were rural/suburban. After that, the class structure shifted to management/labor (with the attendant rise of Unions). Now, the Information Age is shifting things towards a service economy (look at the impotence of unions and the change in work demographics) where the prime class distinction will be information/no_information. Some day everyone will have information (unless they choose not to) and something else will take its place. > A couple of years ago, I subscribed to both CompuServe and Dow Jones > News Service. For about a year I spent a fair amount of money "keeping > on top" of a variety of subjects. >Unused information is indistinguishable from useless information. Hear, hear! There is a strong distinction most people don't make. There is data, and there is information. Data is bits of stuff. Information is data intelligently used. I'm on Compuserve, and there is enough data up there that it could literally become an infinite time and money sink. The question becomes one of tracking down the data you need to get the information that is important to you. chuq