Re: Computers = Trucks?

[Andrew Richards] "[Glen Hurd] "Most people will recognize that you can make a better living with a truck than with a compact, if you can find the work that needs that truck."

Well yeah, that's the whole point of the analogy. Work is the case where you need a truck. The last time PCs were used predominantly for work, DOS was the dominant OS. The PCs as Trucks analogy holds that the vast... "


In the world's larger reality, the "better living" is far more likely to be made those not in trucks or compacts at all, but in chauffeured limos. So this analogy starts out broken, IMO.

And wasn't eliminating the need for "trucks" one of whole points of Job's vision of migrating IP sales onto the App store? You only need trucks if you have boxes, cases of boxes, pallets of cases, and truckloads of pallets to shuffle.

At some point an internet grows up and changes everything, and you can make billions in a system where "trucks" are barely incidental to the process.

We're discussing video production here. And increasingly there is no physical "thing" being sold in our industry any more. We all know we're selling customized arrangements of bits and bytes and that's all.

And it's indisputable that as the power to manipulate those bits and bites migrates from computers in rooms, to computers on desktops, to computers in hands - the game will continue to change.

I appreciate that many, many of the readers here absolutely require a "big iron" strategy to compete at the level that differentiates them.

But to ignore the fact that the rising tide of technology is making it possible for more and players to chip away at the worlds "video to-do list" - while using less and less expensive tools to do it - is to ignore a trend that's both clear and unstoppable.

I'll say it again, access to tools and/or specialized information are less and less a differentiator of anything these days. The tools are readily accessible, the knowledge available on your iPad if you're interested in looking for it.

I suspect the differentiators between "video content vendors" will less and less be the experience and knowledge of how to push the buttons - thats getting more automated and easier to do every year.

So what will remain? Probably just experience figuring out how to use any and every tool you can wield to provide solutions to the needs of your clients and customers.

That and perhaps early spotting of trends amidst constant change are perhaps going to be the key games in the modern era.

(And why we're all spending time hanging out here, basically!)

"Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions."-Justice O'Connor