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Perspicacity

Entry 464, on 2007-01-29 at 16:22:00 (Rating 3, Computers)

Today I read that Bill Gates is predicting a revolution in TV as people move to sourcing content on the Internet instead of watching conventional broadcasts. Gee Bill, do you really think so? Isn't this what people have been saying for a while now? Isn't this a fairly obvious trend, given the success of YouTube and others, and the popularity of download services like iTunes?

Well, good old Bill has always been fairly astute by letting everyone else do the hard work, waiting for others to discern the trends, then to leap in with an inferior solution which uses Microsoft's monopoly position to try to take over the market. Microsoft have been successful to varying degrees in this with technologies such as: web browsing, web mail, media playback, searching, and many others.

But many people think Bill is some sort of genius so, of course, they will ask his opinion, and carefully listen to the answer, won't they? After all, the conventional wisdom is that anyone who makes lots of money must be really innovative and perceptive of future trends. Well, maybe not. Sure, some people do well because they genuinely come up with something new and brilliant, but in the majority of cases it seems that its the copiers who also have the best bag of dirty tricks who really get the benefits.

So I'm afraid I'm not too impressed with Bill's perspicacity. There's an old saying that the explorers get the arrows, and the settlers get the land. In the case of Microsoft, I don't think they would even be a settler, more like some sort of mafia-like organisation that arrives late and bullies everyone else out of the way!

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