The New Economy

Essay by gregor1978High School, 11th grade September 2002

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--The economic changes new technology has set in motion are more interesting

and important than the technology per se.

--The technology makes possible new forms of employment, new approaches

to compensation, and new ways of launching enterprises--what is

often referred to as a Silicon Valley System

--Note that this "Silicon Valley System" spreads across the country

and the world, with nodes in Boston, Austin, Helsinki,

Singapore, and elsewhere.

--Leading-edge users and their innovative applications have created the demand

and the markets that have sustained technological development. Leading-

user industries discovered just what advancing information-processing

technology was good for.

--In the beginning computers were seen as powerful calculators performing

complicated or tedious and lengthy sets of arithmetic operations.

--But by the 1970s it was clear that the computer was at least as useful in

stuffing information into and pulling information out of large data

bases as in being a large calculator.

--In the 1980s computers became ubiquitous in the office because they had

another powerful function separate from computation and sorting:

--The office applications used the microprocessor and memory

not as a calculator or a sorter but a trial-and-error device,

a possibility generator, a way of rapidly manipulating a

virtual document to see what the final physical document

might be.

--In the 1990's the computer has evolved two new major functions:

--It has burrowed inside conventional products as embedded systems

have begun adding intelligence to manufactured goods.

--It has connected outside to create the world wide web of network-

accessible information.

--Back in the 1950s the discoverers of the tools of modern quantitative finance

dismissed them as theoretically interesting but of no practical use--the

calculations required to figure out what an optimally diversified portfolio

would be were totally impractical.

--They did not foresee the implications of the computer revolution.

--Today "rocket...