October 27
- We watched Dot Con today and talked about the economics surrounding the Dot Com bubble. It's really easy to see that what the banks did with IPO sales was really unethical, but then that's the benefit of hindsight. If it's too good to be true, it's probably either illegal or unethical. I guess either way, there will still be people willing to deal with that to make a lot of money.
- I liked the concept of the "greater fool theory". I've never heard the expression, but I think it sums up the issue very nicely. It plays well with "too good to be true". Anything in which you have to rely on someone being the "greater fool" sounds like a terrible idea to me.
- In the video, they talked about the point of the internet being to bring transparency and a level playing field to the marketplace. I think it has definitely done that in some respects, but I think it's a lot easier for things to get lost in the process now that lots of things are handled primarily through the internet. Today, anyone can make themselves seem like anything they want on the internet and the lack of responsibility inherent in that fact allows for a lot of shades of gray.
October 29
- Trust and reputation are possibly the most important ingredients in successful deals. Without trust, anyone would be a complete fool to close a deal. Reputation isn't completely necessary, but even a slight negative reputation should be a red flag to anyone thinking about any sort of deal.
- Overhead costs are incredibly low in software. In a very general sense, it costs nothing to produce unlimited copies of a product. I'd never thought of that before, that once a program is written, it could potentially be distributed to every single machine capable of running it for practically no extra cost than producing one copy. Realistically, programmer time and advertising are significant overhead costs as well as software maintenance, but it's easy to see why Bill Gates was so successful.
- "Technological change is not additive, it is ecological" - I definitely agree with this point. Technology has completely revolutionized every aspect of human life over the course of just the last hundred years. Just the invention of the automobile, television, airplanes, and computers have brought about drastic difference in the way we do things from one hundred years ago.
November 3
- "Media tend to become mythic" - We take so many things for granted that aren't always given. We went from oral tradition to printed word to broadcast media and now we wouldn't know what to do without texting and email, yet some sort of communications outage would eliminate most of the standard methods of communication we use constantly.
- "Culture always pays a price for technology" - I think this one really depends on what we define as "a price". I think it's certainly true in terms of diversity. As technology reduces the gaps between groups of people, each group becomes more like the other, so we lose our diversity a little at a time. On the other hand, I think pretty much any major technological advancement brings net positive change.
- "Advantages and disadvantages of technology are not evenly distributed. There are always winners and losers" - A lot of technological advancements are widely beneficial, but there are certainly barriers to entry. For one, every technology costs money for someone. Whether it's direct cost to the consumer or if it's subsidized, someone pays for everything. For things like gadgets (smartphones, tablets, etc.) the cost is generally direct, which means that people who do not have the means to obtain them are the losers. In a culture where a large percentage adopt a new technology and it becomes commonplace, those who go without lose out on many benefits that society adapts to.
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