Re: <nettime> Michael Malone : Regulating Destruction

[Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi@yahoo.com>]

Regulation, like any other legal construct/entity, follows the reality
and attempts to make it cheaper to maintain.

The reason for less IPOs and fattening of the elephants are not
some mysterious cyclical cosmic rays, but the simple fact that
the computation-machine based industry matured. This influenced
everything, from engineering creativity and entrepreneurial spirit of
silly valley to "regulations".

Initially corporations competed to cover the uncharted territory,
leaving the traditional power structures somewhat behind in the sense
that corporations were left to their own devices to figure it out.
Once it seemed that they did, the capital and power poured in, and
the focus shifted from doing the new to maintaining the existing.
This was completely obvious in late 90s. There are numerous stories
of biggies burying (in more or less gentle ways) startups that had
dangerously interesting technologies (ie, the last thing Cisco needed
after building the whole town in San Jose and merrily selling $20K
routers was some jerks doing the whole IP stack in cheap data-driven
silicon, etc. etc.)

The shift from IPOs to acquisitions started very early, in mid-90s
and it's pretty much complete now. These days a startup would have to
produce an antigravity engine to do the IPO.

This is all expected and natural. The same thing happened to the
automobile industry in mid-20th century. From hundreds of independent
automakers only few survived, with appropriate freeze in innovation.
I mean, why isn't there a new automaking startup today to do the IPO?
Sounds silly? The computer industry is coming to the same maturity.

Instead of lamenting, analyzing, publishing and driveling in general,
getting off your ass and inventing a new industry might be a better
approach.




end
(of original message)

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