This is from Friday's WSJ (let me know if you can't access it). http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704483004575524902014176726.html?KEYWORDS=apple+nano In Comments, give three topics, raised by this post, suitable for a club meeting.
I think I got a little bout of vertigo as I scrolled down and watch the input costs falling, even as they are piling on features.
THREE TOPICS: - The input costs of an iPod Nano have fallen 13.6 percent yearly for the past five years, even as more features have been added. In eleven years, we might infer, an iPod Nano's components will cost less than $10. Now extend this data point more globally: unlike most markets, which generally can expect year-over-year price increases due to inflation, the entire technology sector must operate under the assumption that their product costs must be falling continuously, but sales volume must increase in its place. As humanity grows more and more integrated with technology (cf. the singularity), what implications will the tech sector's business model have on the global economy?
- Reconsider the $10 iPod Nano calculation. In another ten years, the same inputs will go for $2.35. We know that technology enables the transfer of information, and as it grows cheaper, it reduces transaction costs (i.e. makes it more efficient) and improves the collective use of knowledge in a market. As this occurs, what will be its social implications?
In more concrete terms: someday, pro-democracy organizations could parachute-drop iPod Nanos from the sky loaded with "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights" and other documents directly into oppressive countries.
As a destabilizing force, how does technology threaten the long-term viability of autocratic nations (e.g. NKorea, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Thailand, etc.)? This is just one way to consider the larger social-implications question. This could be accomplished on sub-million-dollar budgets, too, meaning that the same practice of "information wars" could be executed by less "friendly" agendas.
- What does the continuation of technological progress depend on? In other words, why it is us (our era, our nations, etc.) that are on the verge of exponential progress towards the singularity? Fundamentally, what have we done right that, presumably, no other society has in the millennia that human civilization has existed? (Cf. the concept of the 5000 year leap).
I think I got a little bout of vertigo as I scrolled down and watch the input costs falling, even as they are piling on features.
ReplyDeleteTHREE TOPICS:
- The input costs of an iPod Nano have fallen 13.6 percent yearly for the past five years, even as more features have been added. In eleven years, we might infer, an iPod Nano's components will cost less than $10. Now extend this data point more globally: unlike most markets, which generally can expect year-over-year price increases due to inflation, the entire technology sector must operate under the assumption that their product costs must be falling continuously, but sales volume must increase in its place. As humanity grows more and more integrated with technology (cf. the singularity), what implications will the tech sector's business model have on the global economy?
- Reconsider the $10 iPod Nano calculation. In another ten years, the same inputs will go for $2.35. We know that technology enables the transfer of information, and as it grows cheaper, it reduces transaction costs (i.e. makes it more efficient) and improves the collective use of knowledge in a market. As this occurs, what will be its social implications?
In more concrete terms: someday, pro-democracy organizations could parachute-drop iPod Nanos from the sky loaded with "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights" and other documents directly into oppressive countries.
As a destabilizing force, how does technology threaten the long-term viability of autocratic nations (e.g. NKorea, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Thailand, etc.)? This is just one way to consider the larger social-implications question. This could be accomplished on sub-million-dollar budgets, too, meaning that the same practice of "information wars" could be executed by less "friendly" agendas.
- What does the continuation of technological progress depend on? In other words, why it is us (our era, our nations, etc.) that are on the verge of exponential progress towards the singularity? Fundamentally, what have we done right that, presumably, no other society has in the millennia that human civilization has existed? (Cf. the concept of the 5000 year leap).