From: mdevney@teamsphere.com [mailto:mdevney@teamsphere.com] Sent: Friday, March 16, 2001 7:00 AM

On Fri, 16 Mar 2001 smd@clock.org wrote:

...

| Yup, it's all about capitalism, and nothing about technical correctness.*sigh*

The long-term maximization of ROI requires technical correctness. Unfortunately there is often alot of arbitrage by people with very short-term goals. Sadly, some of the worst technologies are the ones that get lots of short-term interest.

Slightly off-topic here, but am I the only one who is concerned by the fact that virtually all businesses define "ultra long term" as 5 years or less? It seems that 5 years is about the limits of Capitalism's vision... The Internet, while very young, is still 5 or 6 times that old.

It is the limit of anyone's vision. That's simply because our rate of progress has become so high that we can no longer see that far into the future. The crystal ball no longer works reliably more than 12-18 months out. Anyone pitching a 5-year plan at the VC gets laughed at, rightfully so. The markets have become way too volatile. Ages ago, before GM bought Hughes, we had five-year plans that we updated quarterly. Even HAC doesn't do that anymore. Is there a recent update to MegaTrends?