Lee Gomes: When Pundits Predict Tech's Future, It Is True They Can Draw a Crowd

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "John F. McMullen" <observer () westnet com>
Date: November 15, 2004 10:57:27 AM EST
To: johnmac's living room <johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com>
Cc: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Subject: Lee Gomes: When Pundits Predict Tech's Future, It Is True They  
Can Draw a Crowd

From the Wall Street Journal --  
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110047671839073708,00.html? 
mod=technology_main_promo_left

Portals
When Pundits Predict Tech's Future, It Is True They Can Draw a Crowd
by Lee Gomes

A lot of people will tell you that whenever a Silicon Valley luminary  
starts to describe a hot new technology trend, you should hide your  
wallet, because what you are about to get is a sales pitch disguised as  
prognostication.

Whoever those people might be, none of them were in attendance last  
Tuesday night in a crowded San Jose, Calif., ballroom, when the  
Churchill Club, a local group that sponsors talks on tech topics, held  
a panel discussion about the top trends for the coming year.

It's a popular fall event: Four well-known Silicon Valley figures make  
predictions and then proceed to agree or disagree with each other. They  
conduct themselves as though appearing on a cable-TV sports talk show,  
with lots of "regular guy" banter and barbs. It's amusing and harmless,  
like the astrology column in the paper -- great fun if you don't take  
it too seriously, and probably about as accurate.

Judging by the preponderance of coats and ties in the audience, most of  
the people listening weren't actually entrepreneurs, but rather various  
hangers-on from the service sector: marketers, consultants,  
accountants, PR people and, worst of all, journalists. The sort of  
people, in other words, who don't have the wherewithal to actually  
invent the future themselves, but who will dutifully show up to get  
their meal tickets punched when someone else does.

The first panelist up was John Doerr, a venture capitalist who is  
perhaps most famous for saying at the height of the great Nasdaq stock  
bubble that the Internet was "the largest legal creation of wealth" in  
human history. Perhaps Mr. Doerr meant to add "for those of us lucky  
enough to get out in time," but he never got around to actually saying  
that, and as a result, made it into the Reckless Optimist's Hall of  
Fame during his first year of eligibility.

Last week, Mr. Doerr disclosed that he is, once again, a Web bull. The  
Internet, he said, may actually have been "underhyped." There is now  
under way, he argued, "incredible innovation and systemic  
rethinking/reinvention in important Web services."

Actually, the question of whether something has or has not lived up to  
its potential is a favorite among the technical punditry, because no  
matter which side you take, you can't lose. You simply emphasize  
whichever part of the half-full, half-empty glass makes your point.

For example, there aren't many industries that have embraced the  
Internet more enthusiastically than airlines. But there are few  
industries in worse shape. Who does that vindicate: the tech  
triumphalists, who say the Web will conquer everything, or the digital  
skeptics, who say the Web's capacity for economic transformation has  
been exaggerated? Flip a coin.

The trends cited by the next two panelists -- Roger McNamee and Esther  
Dyson, both technology investors -- were somewhat at odds. Mr. McNamee  
predicted that there won't be another big, late-'90s-style wave of tech  
spending by businesses for at least five years. Ms. Dyson, though,  
predicted a big new business in bringing technology to the health  
industry, mostly for record keeping.

My money is on Mr. McNamee, and not merely because this newspaper had a  
front-page article1 the very day of the panel arguing much the same  
point.

One of the not-so-secret Dirty Little Secrets of the tech world is that  
no one knows how to make this stuff work. When Hewlett-Packard, which  
is in the business of telling other companies how to computerize their  
operations, turned in a disappointing quarter in August, it placed much  
of the blame on a badly flubbed in-house effort to computerize its own  
operations. While I personally would have given Carly Fiorina style  
points for audacious comic irony, Wall Street thought otherwise.

Because of episodes like that, most businesses have long since stopped  
believing the tech world's promises of better living through data  
processing. So why would the health sector act otherwise? And isn't the  
never-ending stream of high technology dreamed up by medical  
entrepreneurs one of the reasons the U.S. spends so much on health care  
in the first place?

For his trend, Joe Schoendorf, another venture capitalist, did a riff  
on the theme of "China: Threat or Menace?" Mr. Schoendorf said the odds  
are good that the Next Big Thing, whatever it is, will come from China.  
While that country is currently best known for its low-cost  
manufacturing, Mr. Schoendorf said that any civilization that could  
invent the compass, gunpowder and paper probably still has a few other  
tricks up its sleeve. Especially since it now graduates more Ph.D.s  
than the U.S. does.

While Mr. Schoendorf was talking, you could feel the energy go out of  
the room. Who, after all, wants to be told they face a future of  
usurpation and irrelevance? Not this crowd!

There were other trends that evening: blogs, stem cells, consumer  
electronics and more. You can see the list yourself in the "Past  
Events" section at churchillclub.org2.

And there's no reason you folks at home shouldn't come up with your own  
trends. To paraphrase what Homer Simpson said about young people: "The  
future belongs to Silicon Valley's leaders -- unless, of course, we  
stop them first."

Send your comments to lee.gomes () wsj com


Copyright 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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