In this month's Technology Review, Michael Schrage comments on how Wal-Mart, not Wall Street, is the critical driver of technology in the US economy. Also, productivity gains from technology spending are present, just not where economists were looking for them. Wal-Mart has used technology to optimize the supply chain rather than spending money for fewer employees to push more paper through the bureaucracy.
This meme has circulated on the fsb list over the last few days, and how has surfaced on the Perl advocacy list.
The really important economic observation that doesn't seem to be generating as much discussion from this month's issue of Technology Review deals with the use of technology on the US Rail system. Rail transportation is one of those sectors of the economy that's incredibly vital and must make a profit off of very small margins. You could have made an argument 20 years ago that the rails needed to computerize to achive greater profits thorugh optimization. Yet they resisted for years (just like they resisted the adoption of new technology. Today, it seems like all of the factors are finally in place -- cheap GPS, computerized AC motors, and cheap fast computers to do route optimization and scheduling.
Lots of technologists live in an envelope of early adoption. However, many of the greatest gains don't come from early adoption of new technologies, but from the adoption by the more conservative early/late majority. (See Crossing the Chasm for more details on this theory.) This story was a very welcome and positive reality check -- demonstrating both the need for practical solutions and identifying unexpected benefits.
This is just *wrong*. Either you're expected to use "propagation", or you're expected to make to full jump to DahutSpeek and use "porpogation". But you can't just stand in the middle like that!
Re:Propogation ?
ziggy on 2002-03-10T19:34:59
Er, ah, correkted.:-)
