day 10

the next big thing 2: the last big thing

Buck and Aroo are inventing the Next Big Thing in Silicon Valley. Of course, this is the NC, Internet Box, or whatever you want to call the gadget that is going to put the CyberSimpson's on the Internet and save SV from big-time recession. The acronym "NC" has been trademarked by Oracle, so we better call this the Box. Not the BeBox, just the Box. With the book-to-bill ratio of the semiconductor industry dipping below 1.0 (0.80 in April 1996) and the consumption of home PCs stalled at around 39% penetration into America's living rooms, the computer industry must find a new bandwagon to jump on. Otherwise, the once-rapidly expanding computer industry will come to a standstill. Within a few months, Fry's sales of Pentiums will dry up, followed six months later by massive layoffs of programmers in SV. The PC as we know it will be a dying breed. It will be the Last Big Thing. What is the cause of this malaise? Could it be the inability of Mom and Dad to install Windows95? Rushing out to the Mall like their neighbors, they bought the cheapest 4MB commodity hardware they could find on December 24th, and on January 1 they discovered that Windows95 requires 8MB to boot up. Another $400 to install RAM, and the suckers of consumerland discover that the CD-ROM they bought won't work with Windows95 at all. By April the whole neighborhood is fed up with computers. Or, is it that ordinary people don't really need a computer? After all, why do ordinary people need a fancy word processor, spreadsheet, or e-mail? When TV arrived on the scene, all you had to do was plug-and-watch. At least it was fun. Computers, on the other hand, require more effort and return less fun - much less. Besides plug-and-re-plug-and-plug, most computer programs have to be fed. Even worse, most useful programs have to be fed intelligent information. Lets face facts: most dim-witted TV watchers don't have the intelligence of a computer chip. Most consumers are simply out-classed by 5.5 million transistors on a speck of sand. How much fun can being out-classed by a dumb machine be, anyhow? Or is the market simply glutted? Everyone who dreamed of owning a computer now has one. Furthermore, these people don't care that the next computer may be faster, sleeker, and pack more gadgetry into the same square feet. The 286 they bought at a garage sale runs WordStar, and that is enough for them. These happy campers are on to the SV game. They realize that a computer bought today will be worthless in a year, so why not just keep the worthless computer they already have? Actually, none of these explanations completely explains why people aren't buying like good little consumers. Only Buck and his employer know how to fix the problem. Only Buck and his employer know what the next big thing is.

the next big thing: 1 2 3 4 5 Daily Dose Index