Blog #8

You ever wonder why making the first movie or the first book of a large series is always the most expensive? So did Stiglitz, he was interested in the cost of things, and the patterns associated with those costs. While the counterpart here Shapiro and Varian were interested in how that technology worked behind the scenes. These authors all brought up very good points but they didn't predict everything. The things they did predict well were the death of Netscape. This was an internet browsing program that was popular in the 90's but fell apart because of Microsoft and that prediction that Shapiro and Varian made.

            The next thing that they talked about mostly was that the death of new programs would come about only because cost of product would continue to rise. This is a major problem in the long run because you can look today at adobe products and see, that people will still buy things for ungodly prices. They predicted that the industry would crash because consumers wouldn't want to buy the expensive product when they could get the same thing with the less expensive product.

Another thing they didn't predict was social media sites. They didn't mention the new idea of using the programs that people had created to connect people or the idea that with this connection it would drive people to get things that others already had just by providing massive amounts of space for people to advertise the programs. Another example is mobile phones. This isn't classically seen as a product but rather a necessity now by many of those that are our age, without your phone people feel lost and feel like they just don’t fit in.

            Although all of that being said I would have to side with Shapiro and Varian, that the industry will crash eventually because technology is getting so expensive. The real reason I think this is because there are so many free versions of software out there now that people can do basically the same thing that the high end gadgets do on something that was free. I feel like their prediction is bound to come true eventually, but Stiglitz was more on the ball with the closer future than they were.