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| GeoCommunity Mailing List |
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| Mailing List Archives |
| Subject: | RE: [gislist] Indian GIS usage |
| Date: |
12/21/2003 11:10:00 AM |
| From: |
Dimitri Rotow |
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>
> That is an interesting choice of words: "brining GIS to the masses." Maybe
> these folks should look at developing markets and products instead of
> building "socialist utopias."
>
I think you are assuming too much from the phrase, which can just as easily
be read as an active, capitalist desire to tap into large volume, mass
market sales, and to then further profit from the explosion of
internconnected uses and market growth made possible by mass market use.
Bringing computing technology to the masses has emerged as a classic way of
wiping out legacy competitors through volume sales. The extinction of Data
General, DEC and other minicomputer vendors at the hands of the likes of
Dell and Gateway comes to mind as a hardware example. The annihilation of
Wangwriters and IBM Displaywriters (1980's word processors that sold for
$15,000 a seat and up) by a swarm of mass market, desktop, word processing
packages like Electric Pencil and Word Perfect provides a software example.
In the next few years the extinction of legacy GIS packages worldwide by
modern GIS technology and business methods that pushes the cost of GIS
below $250 a seat will provide a GIS example of how developing mass markets
and products suitable for the masses will benefit those with the foresight
to understand this inevitable trend.
If anything, the moral is that the only people trying to preserve "socialist
utopias" are those fat and happy bureaucrats who buy the GIS equivalent of
$500 hammers and $2000 toilet seats and the vendors who sell to them. It's
exactly the uptake of modern technology at modern prices by the masses that
powers the evolution of software markets away from state-sponsored,
low-value socialist utopias into high energy, free markets driven by
millions of consumers. Let the good times roll! :-)
Cheers,
Dimitri
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