Speaking as someone who does not live in the Valley, if this is a bubble it's a great deal smaller than the 1999-2000 one, in the intangibles at least. Buzz may be up in the Valley but it's nonexistent out where I am.
I do think there may be a rush to declare bubble. You know, a lot of the promises that powered the first bubble are still true. The Internet really is going to revolutionize every business. Opportunities really are everywhere. It just was and is going to take a bit longer than initially expected, and 1999 infrastructure really couldn't support it. (Remember, in 1999, your top-of-the-line server chip is a Pentium III Xeon, built on a 250nm die, at 600MHz or so, and let's not even talk about the price of one of these. Or how your non-very-tech-savvy customers are supposed to get to your very expensive server.)
> The Internet really is going to revolutionize every business.
No it's not. How is the internet going to revolutionize construction work or trucking? The internet may improve aspects of the business, but it won't bring out any revolution.
Do you really think how your houses foundation is laid will be changed by the internet? Do you think how it's framed will be changed by the internet? Sided, shingled, insulated, drywalled, carpeted, tiled, plumbed, wired? If you genuinely think the internet will revolutionize these industries you're wholly detached from reality and then we might as well be in a bubble.
I suspect you'd find bigger changes that you might think when it comes to coordination and project complexity.
But I really should have said "computers" and not the internet. In about 5 to 10 years, robotics are going to "revolutionize" construction, which in this case sort of translates to "devestate" in much the same way manufacturing has been "devestated" by high efficiency. But somebody in the Valley is going to make a crapload of money on that.
Change isn't revolutionizing. Change is change. Revolutionizing is changing virtually every aspect of a business. The internet didn't change how airplanes fly, are refuelled or maintained. It changes how the seats are sold.
Indeed. But since selling seats is now much cheaper, other aspects changed too to squeeze costs. Though you could argue that changing regulation did as much if not more to effect [sic] the rise of low cost airlines as the internet did.
Most of the impact of the internet seems to be about making things more efficient.
For example, in trucking, GPS/navigation combined with automatic planning of routes, and notification where the trucks are, allows making delivery more efficient and predictable.
It's subjective wether you can call this revolutionary or evolutionary. I'm also tending toward the second. These days, it's all about automating things we were already doing and replacing human workers. Not about really big changes...
Then again, the change from horses to automobiles didn't happen in a day either. There might be big changes in progress that we're not even aware of.
>How is the internet going to revolutionize construction work or trucking?
If you include the smartphone technology than there are big changes coming to construction and trucking. For instance, organizing fleets of trucks using real time gps tracking.
Construction will benefit even more. With an iPhone and the right apps they can co-ordinate in the field in new ways. GPS tagged photos have a lot of uses on construction sites. An electrician can easily document where every wire is. That's a huge advantage if you want to make changes later.
What's the economic benefit for an electrician to document where every wire is? In house construction the electrician is contracted and will never be the one who'll wire you a new plug 10 years down the road when the house is already on it's 2nd owner. For commercial the wiring is already in conduit and done to blueprints. Why would a commercial electrician have incentive to document where every wire is, when there's already blueprints saying where every wire is.
Just an FYI I work in construction, and have done many jobs. I've worked full-time as an electrician and currently as a siding installer (moved country). On the side or through renovation work I've done: plumbing/gas, drywall/plastering, baton-insulation, roofing, framing.
Beyond a foreman's job the internet and smartphone devices are useless. Again a sole-operator (how I worked as an electrician) would gain benefit as you're foremaning your own jobs, which is where real-time ordering would be beneficial. I work with a company now and my being able to real-time order is irrelevant as we have a warehouse manager and the companies only deliver once a week to us. Anything beyond our siding materials, we get from home depot (AKA insta-delivery).
As an electrician I'd have rather had info on why a previous electrician had wired it that way. That takes more figuring out than the 5 minutes tracing the wires (unless you're chasing through a drywall ceiling, FYI that's where I first picked up plastering skills).
I do think there may be a rush to declare bubble. You know, a lot of the promises that powered the first bubble are still true. The Internet really is going to revolutionize every business. Opportunities really are everywhere. It just was and is going to take a bit longer than initially expected, and 1999 infrastructure really couldn't support it. (Remember, in 1999, your top-of-the-line server chip is a Pentium III Xeon, built on a 250nm die, at 600MHz or so, and let's not even talk about the price of one of these. Or how your non-very-tech-savvy customers are supposed to get to your very expensive server.)