Friday, August 2, 1996

My Religion of Technology
by Hey Chet

After a long week at work, here are some of my thoughts on the pessimism that has permeated the market and the gleeful shorts who must be dreaming that the market will go to zero.

Surely, music meant to glorify God and King written by a musical genius such as Bach can walk through time and touch one's soul. It occurred to me that today more people are affected by this music in a day than heard it in every performance while it was directed by the composer several hundred years ago. It was performed then for the "select" few who could commission the piece. Today the technology that enriches our lives so much is as embarrassingly inexpensive as buying a Walkman.

In the dark ages, information was the property of the few, so much so that it was gilded as art. Monks spent their lives "illuminating" the Bible a page at a time, that is, until Gutenberg invented the press, and created a debatably useless product. The product was one that few could afford, or look at and understand -- the Bible in print.

I will remember forever the day when Gorbachev announced a unilateral reduction in SS-20N nuclear missiles aimed at Europe. At the time I was certain that Stars Wars, the B-2 and NATO's resolve brought it to an end. After a decade's reflection, I believe it was "Star Wars" of a different kind; it was a communications satellite broadcasting CNN & MTV.

In these three seemingly random thoughts, there is a common theme, that new technology had unanticipated positive results. Clearly, not all of technology's side effects are beneficial, but most are. After all, if technology were, on balance, corrosive to the human spirit, we would successfully have banned it.

Yet instead of outlawing it, societies that embrace it are encouraged by economic and social expansion as they raise the standard of living of the entire world. In a way, a technological nation may be seen as a new Athens or Rome. As one of China's main exports will be motherboards that need American and Japanese processors, can we envision a kind of "Pax Pentium"? Will China be brought into the world of nations, not by politics, but rather by the demands of its need for technological tools? Is it possible that China's "Velvet Revolution" will happen on the Internet?

Almost thirty years ago, while standing in the dust, a few looked to the stars. With an opposed thumb, a dream, and all the awesome power you find in one of today's pocket calculators, they reached for and touched the moon. The world stood still, waited, cried, then applauded. As individuals, we may look to the stars of our future and see only the smoke of fear and uncertainty and have doubt about many things. But, what we should have no doubt about, is that we have the technology to shape our destiny.

With this in mind, my rhetorical question is, where are we to invest? Why not where we will live, in the future, and in the technologies that will bring us there?

Someday soon you will hear a short (a.k.a. flat earther) on CNBC say that this or that product has more memory, processing power or information sharing potential than people "need." If this makes you believe that you should defensively invest in companies' issues that scrape yellow metal out of the dirt, think what this short would have said about Gutenberg GMBH, then go listen to the beauty of Bach and await the future.

Transmitted: 8/2/96