
Subject: Timing is everything
Posted By: Bruce Bain
Date: February 22, 1999 at 08:53:57
Technology advances and the laws of economics combine to determine when the time is right for widespread acceptance of technology "solutions".
Consider 2 frontpage articles in today's Money section of the USA Today:
"New IBM chip packs power; memory": IBM's new chip is a breakthrough system-on-a-chip that they say in about 3 years will put power of five of today's desktop computers into a cellular phone.
"Flying high on the future" details Five college buddies started Internet search company Excite in a garage six years ago and sold it for $7 billion.
Jack's right, the timing and the economics are both combining to make not laptops as we know them today, but electronic "devices" that can replace very expensive, always out-of-date, static information, error prone, incomplete (thus requirement for supplemental texts) textbooks...history. Yes, we'll still have them, but watch how fast they collect dust when today's students get their hands on the key to their futures!
The time is almost right. So, it's time to get ready.