Now that I am footloose and fancy free (i.e. on a hiatus between jobs), I am going to use the coming weeks to explore some ideas I’ve been working on regarding how the PC, and software industry, are going to evolve in the coming years. I am finally able to put some thought into things that I was too busy to contemplate in depth during recent years. In particular, I will discuss how the global recession (which will likely get considerably worse in the next few years) could act as a catalyst for significant change.
When times are good, consumers and enterprises are willing to keep doing things the way they always have. When times are lean, and unpredictable, people are willing to explore new alternatives that may help them better deal with the new environment. New inventions are rarely created during depressions (i.e. there is a substantial decline in patent filings every time the economy contracts), but the depressions themselves can often lead to the widespread adoption of technologies that had previously only been on the periphery.
Many of the biggest changes we may see occur are in areas that gurus have long foreseen as ripe for transition, but where predictions have consistently been proved wrong due to the momentum older product enjoyed during the salad days.
Stay tuned!
