Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better

Abstract

We are about to witness one of those revolutionary shifts in technology that pass through similar stages of pathologic stress often chronicled for human behavior: first an imperceptible perturbation deemed a singularity or interesting curiosity; then the change grows into a faddish amusement or distraction; soon the amusement starts generating enough money or activity to become either, or both. a real business or a threat to other established enterprises or even to the social order; and finally the technological change takes hold, completely revamps its corner of the universe, economy, or society, and now enters the realm of permanent ?problem? or ?opportunity,? depending on your own particular history and demeanor. The much abused shift of ?paradigms? hardly suffices to describe such changes, for paradigms deal with models of behavior, business, and sociopolitical g?stalt. The Internet is more than a new and different model for communicating electrons. The Internet doesn?t even exist, yet it has passed through the several stages of stress, and is midway between becoming a real business and a threat to the established order of things, and likely to completely revamp telecom, if not some segment of the universe.