|
 |
 |
| The unprecedented cases of companies yet to make a profit gaining billion dollar value on the market makes sense because they have positioned themselves strategically within that market. Although amazon.com, for example, has yet to make a profit, the value of its shares has multiplied hundreds of times in the few years they have been available on the market. In staking out its territory, it has made billionaires not only of Jeff Bezos, who founded the company, but of his parents and friends who lent him the few thousands dollars to get started. Ironically, he got started selling books (that obsolete technology) through the Internet. THE SILICLONE - MY HAPPY ENDING This triple overlap of the three spheres is a solution in search of a problem. It's as if someone invented the can-opener before someone else invented the can. It has already made billionaires of many people but with services that are not essentially new. Amazon.com sold books (that obsolete technology) and is now broadening out to become the eWalMart of the internet. eBay. com is essentially a gigantic global garage sale. Can we go beyond books and barter? I got a glimpse into the future a few years ago when I got an invitation to participate in a conference on Avatars in Virtual Worlds at the Banff Centre for the Arts. I almost blurted out "What are avatars?" before I realized that I could get a free trip to Banff and could find out in the interval. Turns out that an avatar is a digital representation of a person sitting at his/her computer controlling the avatar as it interacts in a virtual world with avatars representing other people sittting at their computers. In those early days, the typical avatar was an Avahunk flirting with an Avatart in some virtual bar. |
 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 
|