day 12

the next big thing 4: every pot

So far we've learned that Buck and his fellow Silicon Valley engineers can dominate the world only by building cheaper computers. On the one hand, Buck's employer would like to invade China, put a computer in every pot, and cash out. Mathematically, there are 1.3 billion consumers in Mainland, and even at genius rates of one-in-a-million this adds up to a million geniuses. There are easily another 10 million school kids per year that need a computer. Every manager, doctor, lawyer, politician, etc., needs a Macintosh for no reason other than to keep up with Americans. This is why Motorola and Apple Computer are spending millions to invade China. On the other hand, Chinese consumers don't have much money. Spending $2,500 on a soon-to-be-obsolete computer would be like an American buying a new house every year. Pulling something stupid like the USA did with Japan, e.g., upsetting the trade balance, won't make China a good consumer, either. Back to Plan A: make computers cheaper, easier to use, and compelling. Putting a compelling computer product in every American pot requires doing battle with Joe Lunchbucket. Thus far, households needed an income of over $50K/year to afford a computer. To squeeze the general public, the $2K computer has to go for $700 or less. But how to make these morsels of silicon compelling? Buck will have to re-invent the PC. The keyboard/screen is out and the TV/video game controller is in. Brain-wrenching Microsoft Office is out, and 3-D virtual worlds are in. Using computers to compose music is out and making long-distance phone calls for free (over the Internet) is in. The false promise of a computer that can take spoken dictation is gone, and the party-line video camera is on its way. Textual e-mail will die off, and dancing avatars will start making appearances on a network near you. Compelling means the Box must entertain. But Hollywood is even more out of touch than Silicon Valley when it comes to electronic entertainment. This means an entirely new edutainment industry must first be created. Another subject for another time. To get to the next big thing, we need clever engineering of the package. In our final episode we design a Box for the Bronx, a mass-consumer product for the masses, a Model-T for the next century. Stay tuned for a preview of Christmas 1998 at Fry's.

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