Digital Economy
But hey, wait a minute, we landed on the Moon 40 years ago without computers (what they had can hardly be regarded a computer by today's standard). The first plane crossed the Atlantic 85 years ago and commercial transatlantic plane service was operational soon after. In the offline world we do not have much more we had 10, 20, 30 or 50 years ago. Cars, jets, dishwashers, we even had mobile phones 20 years ago.
So the world can run without those computers, and whatever valuations the IT industry is getting now must be an inflated bubble, right?
Wrong! Nothing today exists without computers. Nothing.
It is not only the Space Shuttles we use computers to design. Try to imagine any single product that did not involve computers when it was being designed or manufactured or shipped or being sold and paid for. Or a service. We did this transition to the online world almost unnoticed. But this is not the Matrix. We are still physical. We walk offline and we eat offline and we sleep offline and we travel offline. And even though the online world sucks us in for many hours a day, we are still brick-and-mortars and we will stay that way.
But there is one very strong trend involved in the decision making process. Whatever we end up doing offline, we initiate online. Read a paper (online). Prepare a shopping list (online). Shop (online). Decide where to go for vacations (online). Buy flight tickets (online). Book a table at a restaurant (online). And then cook a dinner (online assisted offline). Eat (offline). Fly to Santo Domingo (offline). Get a drink (offline).
This trend is called online to offline transition. It has been big, but now, fueled by mobile Internet it is huge. Affecting almost everything we do. Ron Conway has a great piece on it in The Economist. Definitely worth reading and thinking about.
Great insights you've shared.
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