Saturday, March 21, 2009
A great deck of slides
Via Paul Kedrosky, check out this deck of slides from Morgan Stanley's analyst Mary Meeker. The first part includes some very well presented economic data, and the balance is given over to changes in internet behavior. I have not had a chance to get all the way through it, but the first 80 slides are interesting enough that I wanted to pass them along for your reading pleasure while I fly all night. Perhaps I'll have more to say in the morning.
UPDATE: A reader wrote and said that the embedded deck was freezing her computer, so I took out the embedding code. You can still get to the slides by clicking on the link above.
2 Comments:
By 
A Jacksonian, at
Sat Mar 21, 08:48:00 PM:
It is a good trend analysis, with much of it outgrowths of the technology from the last four years.
The primary motivator is that getting smaller, cheaper and more capable and mobile platforms to individuals has changed how people utilize technology. Social networking has gone from the semi-static early network concepts to fully mobile and interactive concepts. As the overwhelming majority of humanity is gregarious, that basic temperment seeks easy to use and utilize technology for sharing of common interests. This is part of the lateralization of interaction, breaking out of the societal elite/plebe and moving to commonality of interests. While many interests will have a barrier to entry cost (items with expensive price tags) few individuals have those as an exclusive set of desires... even the very rich often have simple pleasures shared by the larger portion of society around them.
This lateral capability has a unique trend, on its own: it removes the idea that top-down command structures are able to actually control anyone. China has had famous incidents, particularly in sharing of regime criticism based on the lateral internal cell phone network. Reports that are negative can be sent out *before* a meeting and there is no literal way of calling the information back, short of shutting down the information infrastructure. Even with draconian controls, those venues that get tacit acceptance are then used in subversive ways (cf. the woman who seduced multiple regime officials and then reported on their sexual prowess or lack of same). If the regime cracks down, then the network becomes less useful and less used, if it doesn't the network turns out to be a very subversive medium just by being capable and present. And as the cost of technology has plummeted, the ability of an individual to have large amounts of duplicate storage and trust networks that are semi-anonymous, means that going after any single data artifact (cell phone, pc, etc.) is a fruitless endeavor in a shared space network. To stop it the regime would have to do as Mao did with the opium traffickers and kill not only them but their families... and that didn't permanently end the problem.
One of the most pronounced cases for this is in Iraq where land lines were anemic under Saddam and cell phones became the major use communications media (after satellite tv the 'national flower' of Iraq) and people exploited the network for everything from voice comms to keeping dirty pictures and stories on them. The idea of a very secular islamic nation going radical when it is so cheap and easy to have, share and trade jokes/pictures/video is nuts. This is why KSA has tried to ban picture phones and found out they came flooding in on the black market, and teens formed dating groups and strip shows which, literally, can't be tracked. The the general age dichotomy shows up as a hard and bright line in repressive countries (socially/politically) and actually slower adoption in more liberal countries after initial introduction, but not before saturation. Tech marketing (white/black market) then should see the highest growth in mid-tier repressive Nations for low end, but still capable technology.
The overall future GDP global downturn caused by multiple market crashes (US due to housing/credit; China due to commercial/industrial Non-Performing Loans; Russia getting whiplashed on oil prices; Europe going through banking decay; Japan still not able to pay off its building binge) means only those Nations with moderate infrastructure needs and relatively stable internal markets will weather the storm well. The US, unless the government goes completely bonkers or implodes, would normally weather this well, but the governmental ideas put in place will cripple future innovation and growth. Robbing those not needing health care for those who will over-use it means less emphasis on productivity: why work harder when most of it will go to government/health care funds/social programs? Much higher taxes, that will make one's eyes water at the high percentages, to pay for this ongoing binge will not help matters at all. The report is quite right that not only cheap entertainment, but low overhead purchasing will move to the forefront as actual taxation on physical facilities will hit the commercial sector very hard. Selling moves from the malls to the office place or even from the home utilizing more centralized warehousing and savvy marketing to gain a profit and a livelihood, possibly using off-shore banking to evade taxation. Trying to tax those items will prove to be a near impossibility as the availability of off-shore banking 'one click away' will mean that the ability to tax commerce will begin to slip outside of the control of any government. Government may wish to tax online sales, but *how* you do it when an individual demonstrates that all spending, purchases and income are held off-shore... that will be a problem. And if you threaten to do it via taxing money as it comes *in* to the Nation or via tariffs, you will begin to see individuals and Nations see this as a direct attack on international trade. Even items of daily needs can be done this way... the more government tries to get money the harder it will be as individuals use the lateral/flat network to shift commerce outside of the individual National realm. A moderate government of small tax basis would not engender this response, but a big government will certainly find this to be the case (cf. black markets in authoritarian regimes existing even though they are illegal). A 'global currency' has no trust basis amongst anyone: corporate, industrial, individual.
It will make for a fascinating few years as Moore's Law hits the silicon size barrier, and Metcalf's law fully takes hold. Nanotech will assuredly change many areas, as will extremely cheap digital platforms and the slow shift to home-based small scale industrial output via the open-machining concept. Large scale industry will continue to play a major role, but mass-customization (started in the mid-1990's in print advertisments) will now go full bore and people will expect things to be customized to them (clothing to sizing and coloring needs, specialized foods, etc.). A new computing platform concept will show up, probably of the quantum sort, and we will then be right back where we were in the late 1970's with an anemic economy, stagflation (of some new type) and a revolutionary new way of using digital power showing up, save that this will be on the Feiler Faster Thesis ramping up and adoption timeline. We may be experiencing the one, last furtive power grab by the centralist political organizations wanting industrial based socialism in a post-industrialized world that sees socialism as a quaint idea from the 19th century: it didn't work then and it won't work now. What does a flat, persron-to-person, viral/spiral marketing by individuals for customized products look like? We are about to find out... and what Gutenberg did to religion, this will do to politics and governments.
Just a quick first hit.
By 
, at
Sat Mar 21, 10:30:00 PM:
Interesting (and not highlighted) point on Slide 5 - "January 1993: HUD begins promoting broader home ownership..."
Remind me again, what changed in the federal government (and as result, HUD) on January 20, 1993?
Big Hint: His wife is currently the Secretary of State.
