The End of Technology as we know it?

Rory Cellan Jones of the BBC on the doom and gloom in the tech markets:

The reaction to this state of affairs by some is to decide that technology no longer matters and that the process of change will now go on hold for a few years. Or, as a colleague put it after overhearing me discuss some new smartphone: "The world is falling about our ears and all you can talk about is your silly little gadgets."

I think that is short-sighted. We are right in the middle of some fascinating shifts in the way we use technology - from the rise of social networking, to the mobile internet and the advent of cloud computing.

Last time we had a serious downturn in technology investment at the beginning of this decade, the world did not stand still. In a harsh climate, smart new ventures - from last.fm to Skype - were born, and consumer behaviour was transformed by the arrival of broadband.

Agree wholeheartedly - I was there in The Dotcom crash, companies collapsed left right and centre, but the 'Net just kept on growing. The Internet is arguably the most profound structural shift in society for probably 100 years, since the telephone/motorcar shift - and like all other great revolutions in communications, it will impact globalisation, energy usage and politics far more than they impact it.

And like all those revolutions (think railways, telephones, etc) there were always big booms and busts, but they kept on growing - and this one ain't going away soon either. Nor is Da Money, because:

- Attention online is far higher than Adspend - its difficulties with the metrics that are keeping it from flowing faster.

- There is still a lot of money in the big players

- In tough times companies start to fix things which they leave alone in good times, and cost is king - and this technology has huge cost advantages across the supply chain over older ones

- Dumb money is driven out, so less crap is funded, thus good ideas and companies have a better chance.

And the NASDAQ is still 50% up on the dog days of 2002 - now, that was a really tough market!

On a related topic, The Grauniad's Jemima Kiss wonders if its The End of Free. Now, as readers will know, we are very sceptical of the huge reliance on FreeConomics in the techworld (start here), but it has a place in early stage startups - where it gets hard is relying on it as a run-time model when credit is gone. So yes, if you are building a me-too service based on a FreeConomic biz model with no reason for an offset subsidy from someone with deep pockets, you are very probably f*cked.