More on the Changin' Times......

Technology Revolutions vs. Media Revolutions I've quoted Paul Saffo when he has presented at SEMI's annual Industry Strategy Symposium. He will be presenting again this year. Some recent comments he made in an article I read today fall neatly in line with the article I posted yesterday: "It turns out, the Internet revolution was not a technology revolution but a media revolution," says Paul Saffo of the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, Calif. "It's a shift from mass media to personal media." Speaking cosmically, he is by no means certain that this is an entirely good thing: "Digital technology is so bewitching that it risks turning everything into entertainment ... and the lesson from Rome onward is that all great civilizations fail by turning everything into entertainment." Link to full article: http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1214/p01s01-ussc.html Cosmically speaking, I don't think it would it be a stretch to link this trend to the trends we see taking hold in the companies that make up the semiconductor and semiconductor equipment world. One might say all this is 20/20 hindsight but that is not totally true. If you will recall the hype in '99, '00 and '01 was more centered on hardware performance and how the Internet was going to influence (revolutionize) corporate productivity and, as a byproduct, profitability. If you poll end product manufacturers and device makers today you will see a more pronounced tout of their products that address the delivery of "digital media". The Media Center PC is a great example. Yes, corporations and individuals also use digital technology to enhance their productivity and profits. I am not going to deny that and I will certainly not say uses aimed in this direction are reaching a dead end. At the same time, I wonder about the growth rate and momentum of the end market products that are aimed at productivity enhancement. The chip companies, holding a business that is driven by unit volumes, have certainly been thinking about it..... Drop me a note if you have some thoughts on this....