以下是New Rule for the Economy作者Kevin Kelly慶祝New Rules出版10週年，將原著以每兩週一篇的頻率，重新發表到部落格，免費和大家分享。有興趣的人可到此訂閱。今天和大家分享一段和Microsoft有關係的橋段，在當時，全球蔓延在軟體皆產業的熱潮中，微軟的商業模式更是如日中天，大師們紛紛預測，未來數十年，將是微軟，或是「微軟模仿者」的年代…
(注意，這是10 年前寫的，當時MS的股價和身價是開無敵模式)：
…GM is now the counter example. Today, if your company is like GM, it’s in deep trouble (真巧XD). Instead, pundits point to Microsoft. Microsoft is the role model. It is the highest-valued company on Earth. It produces intangibles. It rides the logic of standards. Its sky-high stock valuation reflects the new productivity. So we look ahead and say: In 40 years all companies will be like Microsoft.
History would suggest this is a bad bet. The obvious lesson is that we tend to project the future from what’s fashionable at present (雲端計算？Web ?.0？搜尋？). Right now software and entertainment companies are very profitable, so we assume they are role models.
Brad DeLong, an economist at UC Berkeley, has handy theory of economic history. He says that various sectors of economy wax and wane in prominence like movie stars. The history of the American economy can be seen as a parade of “heroic” industries that first appear on the scene as unknowns, then heroically “save” the economy by doing economic miracles, and for a time are treated as economic stars.
In the 1900s, the automobile industry was heroic: There was incredible innovation, many, many car company upstarts, incredible productivity. It was a wild and exciting time. But then the heroism died away and the auto industry became big, monolithic, boring, and hugely profitable. In DeLong’s view, the latest heroic savior is the information, communication, and entertainment complex. Businesses in the realm of software and communications are now valorous: They pull successes out of a hat, stack up unending innovation, and perform economic miracles. Long live computers!
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